.Dolores Sheen, standing, a niece of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, and her daughters Lynn McCaddon and Mary Lou Sheen pray at the tomb of the famed evangelist and media pioneer and sainthood candidate at St. Mary s Cathedral in Peoria, Ill., Feb. 4, 2021. (The Catholic Post/Tom Dermody) .Coadjutor Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, Ill., applauds as a city traffic operations worker unveils a newly erected sign designating Madison Avenue outside of St. Mary s Cathedral as Honorary Bishop Fulton Sheen Ave. Archbishop Sheen, a candidate for sainthood, was a famed media evangelist, mission promoter and author who is buried at the cathedral. (The Catholic Post/Tom Dermody)
.Coadjutor Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, Ill., celebrates a Mass at the tomb of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen at St. Mary s Cathedral in Peoria Dec. 9, 2020, the 41st anniversary of the media pioneer s death. He began the Mass by announcing that Msgr. Richard Soseman, vice postulator for Archbishop Sheen s sainthood cause, had died of COVID-19 just hours earlier. (CNS photo/Tom Dermody, The Catholic Post) .Msgr. Richard Soseman, a priest of the Diocese of Peoria, Ill., and vice postulator of the sainthood cause of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, pictured in this 2013 photo, died of COVID-19 Dec. 9, 2020, at the age of 57. His death came on the same day the archbishop died 41 years earlier and was announced at an anniversary Mass broadcast from Archbishop Sheen s tomb at St. Mary s Cathedral in Peoria. (CNS photo/Nancy Piccione, The Catholic Post)
A Mass at the tomb of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on the 41st anniversary of his death Dec. 9 also was a first opportunity for the Diocese of Peoria to mourn the death from COVID-19 two hours earlier of the vice postulator of the famed media pioneer and author’s cause for canonization.