His tomb, Peoria
Archbishop Sheen rests in a side chapel of the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria, the same cathedral where he was ordained a priest on 20 September 1919. His body was brought there in June 2019, after a long legal question over where he should lie was resolved, and many spoke of it as Sheen coming home. Pilgrims are welcome to pray at the tomb, and the cathedral posts its visiting times.
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The Sheen Museum, Peoria
A short walk away, in the Spalding Pastoral Center, is the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Museum, on the campus where he went to school as a boy. It holds artifacts, vestments, and film from across his life, and the sisters who care for it give guided tours. Groups are asked to arrange a visit ahead of time. Between them, the tomb and the museum already draw thousands of pilgrims a year, for a man not yet beatified.
El Paso, Illinois
He was born Peter John Sheen on 8 May 1895 in El Paso, Illinois, in the rooms above his family's hardware store, and took the name Fulton, his mother's maiden name, as a boy. The small town north of Peoria still remembers its most famous son.
Coming in 2027: the Sheen Experience
In October 2025 the Diocese of Peoria broke ground on the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Experience, an immersive center in the former Spalding Institute downtown, the high school Sheen himself attended. Interactive exhibits and a large archive of his television and radio work are planned, and it is expected to open in 2027.
For those attending: Catholic St. Louis
If the beatification brings you to St. Louis, the city rewards a pilgrim. A few sites are worth the walk, and the first is part of the week itself.
The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis
The great mosaic cathedral, sometimes called the Rome of the West, holds one of the largest collections of mosaic art in the Western Hemisphere, some 83,000 square feet of it. The pilgrimage week’s Vespers are sung here on 23 September, the evening before the Mass. Go in the morning if you can, when the light sets the gold tiles alight.
The Basilica of St. Louis, King of France
Known simply as the Old Cathedral, it was the first cathedral west of the Mississippi, dedicated in 1834, and stands in the shadow of the Gateway Arch downtown. A small museum keeps relics of the city’s earliest Catholic history.
The Shrine of St. Joseph
A church from 1846, and the site of an authenticated miracle: a dying man was healed after venerating a relic of St. Peter Claver, and the healing was accepted toward that saint’s canonization. Its central altar is called the Altar of Answered Prayers.
The National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows
Across the river in Belleville, Illinois, about half an hour out, is one of the largest outdoor shrines in North America, with grounds laid out for prayer and procession. A fitting close to a pilgrimage.
Mass and visiting times vary at each, and some ask groups to arrange a visit ahead. Check each site before you go.
For hours, tours, and directions, the Foundation and the cathedral keep the current information.