
By Howard Packowitz
PEORIA – The legal wrangling isn’t over between Central Illinois and New York Catholics about the final resting place for El Paso native, Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
Trustees of New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where Sheen now rests, are appealing a New York Superior Court ruling allowing the famed preacher’s niece to move the remains to Peoria.
The Peoria Diocese believes the transfer would speed-up efforts to elevate Sheen to sainthood. However, the New York Archdiocese said in a statement released Friday that it is the trustees’ duty to respect Sheen’s wishes that he be buried in New York rather than relying on “speculation and conjecture of others.”
Sheen’s niece and the Peoria Diocese want to place Sheen’s remains in a shrine at Peoria’s St. Mary’s Cathedral.
Howard Packowitz can be reached at [email protected]