The unprecedented delay before Blessed Fulton Sheen’s Sept. 24 beatification might make for an unusually short wait for the American evangelist to be declared a saint, thanks to a not-well-known detail in the Church’s rules for canonization.
In fact, a priest helping to promote Sheen’s cause says that the new “Blessed” could be declared a saint in as few as three years.
If so, that’s practically sprinting compared to the normal lag time — an average of 49 years between beatification and canonization, with a median of 12.5 years, according to a 2010 study called “Economics of Sainthood” that examined relevant cases between 1592 and 2009.
The secret to Sheen’s possible quick trip to sainthood is that while most causes must wait for a miracle after beatification, there are already six purported miracles attributable to the blessed archbishop’s intercession that are eligible to be considered in his canonization cause. Sheen would need only one of them approved by Rome to qualify for sainthood.
In other words, Sheen has a head start — thanks in part to the roadblocks his beatification encountered after Pope Francis first approved it in 2019.
“It’s a little bit of an obscure technicality,” said Msgr. Jason
