ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
Fulton Sheen, the first Televangelist, was a pop-culture phenom and bonafide star. On the brink of sainthood, can his cause rise above diocesan disputes, a polarized Church, and nation divided?

SYNOPSIS
There has never been an American-born male saint. On September 24, 2026, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was beatified before 50,000 people in St. Louis, the final step before canonization, with millions more tuning in on TV. It comes after 12 years of in-fighting between two dioceses, a pandemic, a New York Supreme Court lawsuit, a hush-hush exhumation at dawn, and, literally, a miracle.

At his peak, Sheen was America’s first televangelist, beating Milton Berle in the ratings with nothing but a blackboard and a lecture on the soul. He drew 30 million viewers and an Emmy, becoming a household name far beyond the Catholic Church. But the road to sainthood has been anything but smooth: a David-and-Goliath battle between the Archdiocese of New York and the small Diocese of Peoria for custody of his remains, revived by his feisty 90-year-old niece, and nearly derailed when the beatification was mysteriously postponed in 2019.

AMERICAN SAINT follows this saga to its conclusion while portraying a complex man: a Cold War anti-communist who became a civil-rights champion, at home in both a New York brownstone and the Church’s poorest missions, comfortable speaking about life’s biggest questions but private about his own heartaches, beloved by millions but disdained by some in his own diocese.

Now, Sheen has become a kind of Rorschach test, his legacy at the crossroads of nearly every fault line in American religious life: distrust of institutions alongside a resurgent hunger for faith, a Church still answering for its sins even as it celebrates a new American pope, and a political moment in which Sheen’s creed, a moral stand rather than a political one, feels both quaint and urgently needed. This is not hero worship, but a layered account of one man’s earthly life and his nearly fifty-year afterlife.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature

DIRECTOR Allison Berg
PRODUCER Allison Berg, Caryn Capotosto

ID: 827