About 40 miles from Peoria, past farms of mostly corn and soybeans with a few dairy cows, sits El Paso. Not the Texas border city, but a town of 2,500, as the sign that welcomes entering traffic says. The Dairy Queen and the McDonald’s are there to serve drivers passing by on I-39, just west of El Paso, and Illinois State Hwy. 24, which runs through it, as much as they are for residents.

The Diocese of Peoria stretches across northern-central Illinois, from Missouri on its west, all the way to the Indiana border. El Paso is smack in the middle, in Woodford County.

Turning off Hwy. 24, a left and two rights bring the driver to the corner of East Third St. and North Elm St., where St. Mary’s Church, a red brick structure with a single steeple, stands, flanked by a rectory and separated only a short way from the church hall. It was on that site that Peter John Sheen, now Blessed Fulton Sheen, was baptized. 

“Baptismal site of Archbishop Fulton Sheen,” says the church’s sign, along with the name of its pastor, Fr. Justin Ramza, and the times for its two weekend Masses: Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 10 a.m.  

Inside the well-maintained sanctuary, the parish’s fondness for Blessed Sheen is obvious. Prayer cards featuring Sheen greet the visitor, standing just above the parish’s guest book. On both sides of the vestibule are Sheen-related photographs of him and the original church building, and now second-class relics, including a letter from the newly blessed. 

A small parish prepares to celebrate 

When The Good Newsroom visited on Friday, Sept. 25, a day after Sheen’s beatification in St. Louis, volunteers were preparing for a Mass of Thanksgiving to be celebrated by Bishop of Peoria Louis Tylka, and concelebrated by Bishop John Barre of New York’s Rockville Centre, who was baptized by then-Bishop Fulton Sheen. St. Mary’s held a watch party for the beatification Mass on Thursday, Sept. 24. 

In one corner of the sanctuary stands a portrait of then-Archbishop Sheen, hung above another second-class relic: a family heirloom, a statue of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus that first belonged to his mother and then passed to Blessed Sheen before becoming part of the church’s collection. 

About 160 families make up the St. Mary’s parish community, according to Jessica Heineke, parish secretary for that church and St. John’s Church in Benson nearby. Fr. Ramza, who was not was not available for interview, is there parish’s only priest; there are no deacons, she said. St. Mary’s will likely confirm eight young people in the coming year, with 37 enrolled in Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) classes, with more of each at the Benson church, Heineke said.  

Remembering Sheen in El Paso 

One parishioner recalled a visit to St. Mary’s by Blessed Sheen, in what would have been the final year of his life, 1979. “He stood there at the entrance and was totally surrounded by people,” said Paul Schmidt, a member of St. Mary’s for 47 years, with his wife, Beth. Sheen is also remembered in the name of the local Knights of Columbus council, which is named for him. The council has erected a memorial stone to Sheen outside the parish. 

Members of the extended Sheen family remained active in the parish for decades after Blessed Sheen and his immediate family relocated to Peoria around 1900, Schmidt said, including members of the Cleary family, cousins of the Sheens, and Merle Fulton, a cousin of Sheen’s mother, Delia. 

Elsewhere in town, a lopsided stone marker denotes 25 West Front St., where Blessed Sheen was born on May 8, 1895. The site is now occupied by a restaurant, Topsy’s Tavern. 

At the Mass of Thanksgiving on Saturday, Sept. 26, Bishop Tylka revealed that on Dec. 9, Blessed Sheen’s feast day, St. Mary’s Church would be renamed Blessed Fulton J. Sheen Church, the first in the world to bear his name. 

— OSV News contributed to this report.