UPDATES MAY 2019

May 4 MARIA CONCEPTION  de ARMIDA, known as CONCHITA  (see BLOG 4/19/17) was beatified. She was born during the Mexican Civil War and  grew up during the Revolution and the religious persecutions that were a part of it. She was married and  widowed at age 39.  She had nine children.

As a mystic, she reported that she heard God telling her: "Ask me for a long suffering life and to write a lot... That's your mission on earth". She never claimed direct visions of Jesus and Mary but spoke of Jesus through her prayers and meditations.

She was foundress of many religious organizations which included the Apostolate of the Cross and the Congregation of Sisters of the Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus founded in 1897,

and the Congregation of Missionaries of the Holy Spirit founded in 1914.

 

Though her children claim they rarely saw her take the time to write, she left 65,000 hand-written pages of mystical meditations.

She is the first Mexican lay woman to be beatified.

"I carry within me three lives, all very strong: family life with its multiple sorrows of a thousand kinds, that is, the life of a mother; the life of the Works of the Cross with all its sorrows and weight, which at times crushes me until I have no strength left; and the life of the spirit or interior life, which is the heaviest of all, with its highs and lows, its tempests and struggles, its light and darkness. Blessed be God for everything!"

The New York Court of Appeals has dismissed an appeal of an earlier judgement allowing VENERABLE FULTON SHEEN’s  (see BLOG 3/22/12)remains to be moved to the Cathedral of St. Mary in Peoria, in accordance with his family’s wishes.  The May 2 dismissal of the Archdiocese of New York’s appeal could pave the way for the Illinois-born archbishop’s beatification, after almost three years of litigation

 “Although the New York Archdiocese may technically have legal options remaining, they are contrary to the wishes of Archbishop Sheen and his family, and would serve no genuine purpose except to delay the eventual transfer of Archbishop Sheen’s remains,” it added.

Archbishop Sheen served as host of the “Catholic Hour” radio show and the television show “Life is Worth Living.” He authored many books, with proceeds supporting foreign missions. He headed the Society for the Propagation of the Faith at one point in his life, and continued to be a leading figure among Catholics in the U.S. until his death.

The Peoria diocese opened the cause for Sheen’s canonization in 2002 after Archdiocese of New York said it would not explore the case. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI recognized the heroic virtues of the archbishop.

However, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria suspended the beatification cause in September 2014 on the grounds that the Holy See expected Sheen’s remains to be in the Peoria diocese.

The Archbishops’s will had declared his wish to be buried in the Archdiocese of New York Calvary Cemetery. Soon after he died, Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York asked Joan Sheen Cunningham, the Archbishop’s niece and closest living relative, if his remains could be placed in the crypt of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, and she consented.

Later  the niece has since said that her uncle would have wanted to have been interred in Peoria if he knew that he would be considered for sainthood. In 2016, she filed a legal complaint seeking to have her uncle’s remains moved to the Cathedral of St. Mary in Peoria.

If I had a relative up for sainthood, believe me nothing would get in the way of their canonization.  Let’s  hope this is the end of the feud and the process can rapidly continue to give this great man  of prayer his due!

Archbishop Sheen’s intercession is credited with the miraculous recovery of a pronounced stillborn American baby from the Peoria area. In June 2014, a panel of theologians that advises the Congregation for the Causes of Saints ruled that the baby’s recovery was miraculous – a key step necessary before someone is beatified.