October 2, 2026

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Blessed Fulton J. Sheen helped shape the pastoral leadership of Archbishop O’Meara

Blessed Fulton J. Sheen, left, poses with Pope Pius XII and then-Msgr. Edward O’Meara for a photo likely taken in 1957 at the Vatican. Msgr. O’Meara later served as archbishop of Indianapolis from 1979 until his death in 1991. (Photo courtesy of the Archives of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis)

By Sean Gallagher

On Dec. 13, 1979, Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara stepped into the ambo of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City to give the homily at the funeral of his longtime friend, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

“A voice is silent in the midst of the Church, and in our land, the like of which will not be heard again in our day,” Archbishop O’Meara said at the start of his homily. “The vocation of Fulton Sheen is consummated; he has responded with one final ‘Yes’ to the call of God, a ‘Yes’ so final that human frailty and infirmity can never reverse it.”

The voice of Archbishop Sheen may no longer have been heard after his death on Dec. 9, 1979, but, in many ways, it echoed in the years to come in the pastoral leadership of his friend.

Archbishop O’Meara was appointed to lead the Church in central and southern Indiana on Nov. 27, 1979, less than two weeks before Archbishop Sheen’s death.

Their close connection was on display during the Sept. 24 Mass in St. Louis during which Archbishop Sheen was declared blessed. Archbishop Charles C. Thompson, who was a concelebrant at the liturgy, wore a pectoral cross that had been given to Blessed Fulton by Pope Pius XII in 1951 on the occasion of his ordination as a bishop.

It came to be in the possession of the archdiocese because of the friendship between Blessed Fulton and Archbishop O’Meara and is now preserved in the archdiocese’s archives.

“I was wearing a relic, something that was very close to now Blessed Fulton Sheen,” Archbishop Thompson said in an interview with The Criterion. “And it also shows the connection to the archdiocese through Archbishop O’Meara. It was very powerful to wear that.”

A friendship based in mutual love of the Eucharist

As a young priest of the archdiocese, now-retired Msgr. Mark Svarczkopf spent much time socially with Archbishop O’Meara. He shared in an interview with The Criterion his thoughts on how Blessed Fulton helped shape the pastoral leadership of Archbishop O’Meara.

It all started through the young Father O’Meara’s love of the Eucharist, and for knowing where a light switch was, said Msgr. Svarczkopf.

Archbishop Sheen was the national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and was in St. Louis in the early 1950s for a meeting of the society.

Early one morning, he was trying to pray the Liturgy of the Hours from his Breviary during a Holy Hour he was making in the darkened crypt of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.

He sensed that there was another priest there and asked him if he knew how to turn the lights on, which he did.

That priest was Father Edward O’Meara.

“So, he turned on the light switch, and they were able to pray the Breviary together. And Fulton Sheen says, ‘This kid’s a genius. I want him working for me,’ ” Msgr. Svarczkopf recalled with a laugh before becoming more serious.

“That was his entree into his working with Sheen. But out of all the priests there [in St. Louis for the meeting], apparently there were only these two praying a Holy Hour. That tells you something. Making a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament was important [to both of them].”

Archbishop O’Meara served as the assistant national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith from 1956-60. He succeeded Archbishop Sheen as the national director in 1966.

During their collaboration in the society, Archbishop O’Meara traveled with Blessed Fulton across the country and around the world in the society’s support of the Church’s missionary work.

Msgr. Svarczkopf said that it would have been easy for Blessed Fulton simply to have a local priest assist him in his visits, “but he always took O’Meara.”

“There are so many pictures of Fulton Sheen in Africa wearing some sort of native garb, and O’Meara’s right there with him,” Msgr. Svarczkopf said.

‘Never forget anybody’s name’

Many of these trips involved Archbishop Sheen visiting with donors who supported the work of the society. This, Msgr. Svarczkopf said, helped Archbishop O’Meara learn the importance of a personal connection in fostering stewardship.

“There was a lot about the strength of the personality of the person who’s asking and the person who’s giving, rather than it just coming in the mail,” Msgr. Svarczkopf said.

Archbishop O’Meara put that learning to use when he was appointed in 1979 to lead the Church in central and southern Indiana. As during his work for the society, he made frequent visits to parishes across the archdiocese.

An early initiative that he began was the archdiocese’s first annual giving program, which was then called the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal.

“We didn’t have that before O’Meara,” Msgr. Svarczkopf said. “And that came from Sheen. It was based on the personality of the archbishop. Everybody liked O’Meara. So, they wanted to help him out. He knew you, and he had been to your parish.”

The personal connection that Archbishop O’Meara made with Catholics across the archdiocese was aided by another principle he saw Blessed Fulton apply—to “never forget anybody’s name,” said Msgr. Svarczkopf, adding that Blessed Fulton taught Archbishop O’Meara methods to remember the names of the people he met.

“If you know anything about these great Churchmen, the ones that are really great remember who you are,” Msgr. Svarczkopf said. “There is a skill in doing it. And it means that it’s important enough for you to learn that skill.”

Handing on ‘a manly rosary’

Archbishop O’Meara was not only the homilist at Blessed Fulton’s funeral, he was also the executor of his will. Because of that, some of his personal possessions came into the possession of the archdiocese.

That included the pectoral cross that Archbishop Thompson wore at the beatification Mass. Archbishop O’Meara also had a rosary that belonged to his friend. He gave it to Msgr. Svarczkopf while on his deathbed.

The retired priest described it as “a manly rosary.”

“The rosary must have weighed about 3 pounds with a big heavy chain and big black beads,”

Msgr. Svarczkopf recalled. “Sheen thought it was a manly thing to pray the rosary. He was faithful to praying the rosary.”

Msgr. Svarczkopf gave the rosary to a seminary friend of his, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, now the retired archbishop of New York, when he was appointed an auxiliary bishop of St. Louis in 2001. Archbishop O’Meara had ordained Cardinal Dolan a priest in 1976 when the archbishop was then himself a St. Louis auxiliary bishop.

Eight years later, when Cardinal Dolan was being installed as the archbishop of New York, he stood outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral as hundreds of priests walked by him in the liturgy’s opening procession, often greeting priests that he knew, including Msgr. Svarczkopf.

“He saw me and said, ‘Hi, Mark. I prayed Bishop Sheen’s rosary this morning,’ ”

Msgr. Svarczkopf recalled. “So, I imagine Dolan is still using Fulton Sheen’s rosary.”

Sharing our faith ‘with the wider world’

It is a task of archdiocesan archivist Julie Motyka to preserve items that have come into the possession of the archdiocese, including relics like the pectoral cross of Blessed Fulton.

“It is amazing to care for items that belonged to saints or blesseds, as we do have other relics in the archdiocesan archives,” she said. “However, what I find to be the most meaningful aspect of caring for a relic is that it reminds us that the saints were human. Saints had documents and possessions the same as the rest of us.”

Motyka also sees in the letters kept in the archives the way in which Blessed Fulton influenced Archbishop O’Meara’s approach to leading the Church.

“You can see this in the way that Archbishop O’Meara was very much a people person,” she said. “Archbishop Sheen was a television personality who loved to teach and speak, and that reflected onto Archbishop O’Meara’s leadership style.”

After he was appointed to lead the Church in central and southern Indiana, Archbishop O’Meara continued to have a concern for the Church around the world as he had in his ministry in the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. He served from 1987-91 as chairman of Catholic Relief Services, the international aid organization of the Church in the U.S.

“Archbishop O’Meara desired, like Archbishop Sheen had, to serve the global Church,” Motyka said. “Now Archbishop Thompson serves as a member of the board of Catholic Relief Services, carrying on that tradition.

“Here in the archdiocese, I think we should feel inspired by the legacy of an archbishop who taught us that we have a responsibility to share our faith with the wider world.”

(To learn more about the friendship between Blessed Fulton J. Sheen and Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara, visit archindy.org/sheen-omeara.) †

The Criterion