Meet the 50,000 Catholics Who Went to See America’s Next Saint

ST. LOUIS, Missouri — On Wednesday night, more than 600 people flooded into the Old Cathedral on the banks of the Mississippi River. There were Gen-Z girls, some in sweatpants, some in lace veils; there were newlyweds standing next to young seminarians. Before long every pew had been filled, and worshippers took to kneeling in the aisles, then the back of the nave, then they stood packed in the vestibule before spilling out the doors entirely.

They had come from across the country and were there for a holy hour held in honor of Fulton Sheen, whose Emmy-winning television show, Life Is Worth Living, made him the most famous priest in America in the 1950s and ’60s. The next day he would be beatified in front of 50,000 people packed into a former NFL stadium.