An Illinois woman has said that Archbishop Fulton Sheen, a mid-20th-century American priest famed as an early television broadcaster, saved her stillborn son's life through prayer in 2010, a case the Catholic Church has since recognised as a miracle. The finding clears the way for Sheen's beatification, the penultimate step towards sainthood, with a ceremony now scheduled for 24 September in Illinois after years of delay.

Bonnie and Travis Engstrom prayed to Sheen after their son James showed no signs of life at birth; doctors, who had been preparing to record a time of death, then detected a faint heartbeat, and he is now a healthy teenager. Pope Francis had approved the miracle, but the 2019 beatification ceremony was postponed following a request from the Diocese of Rochester amid clergy sexual abuse investigations in New York; church officials later found no reason for further delay, and Pope Leo XIV approved the beatification in February. Sheen, born in Illinois in 1895 and known as America's first "televangelist," reached millions on NBC radio and won an Emmy for his television show; tens of thousands are expected at the beatification.