WILLIAMSBURG — Father Frank Mann remembers being a seminarian during the late 1970s when someone approached and asked for his autograph.
The request baffled him. Why would anyone want the signature of an unaccomplished young man still studying at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, New York?
What puzzled him more was the person making the request — Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who, a decade earlier, earned the reputation of a charismatic Catholic preacher on prime-time television.
They met during a pro-life event at St. Patrick’s Parish, also in Huntington. Father Mann clarified that he asked the archbishop for an autograph first.
“I wanted to preach just like him,” he said, “and when I met him face-to-face, I said that to him.”
Father Mann said he grew up in Middle Village, Queens, watching Archbishop Sheen’s TV show, “Life Is Worth Living,” so he asked him to sign his program from the pro-life event.
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“And [Archbishop Sheen replied], ‘You got to sign mine first,’ ” Father Mann recalled with a laugh. “I said, ‘But why? You’re Fulton Sheen. I’m just a seminary student. And he said, ‘But you’re going to be a priest. You want to preach like me, right? So, I need your autograph.’
“That interaction — I never forgot.”
Father Mann lamented that Archbishop Sheen’s autographed program did not survive a basement flood several years ago. Still, he has numerous other artifacts from the archbishop that he showed The Tablet on Feb. 10.
A day earlier, Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria, Illinois, announced that the Vatican had approved the beatification of Archbishop Sheen, although no date or location for the celebration has been announced.
Father Mann is a retired priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn who helps at St. Francis of Paola Church, a part of Divine Mercy Parish in Williamsburg.
“I am a voracious collector of autographs,” he said. “And, with Fulton Sheen, I knew without a doubt that he was going to be beatified or canonized one day. So, I started collecting things that are very hard to find related to Fulton Sheen.”
The trove includes inscribed portraits of the celebrity archbishop, autographed copies of his books, and letters he wrote.
It also holds two strands of purple thread from the tassels of one of his sashes, which will be considered second-class relics, Father Mann said.
“I’ve just been gathering them up,” he said of the memorabilia, “because I think he’s an incredible figure in the Church.”
Father Mann explained how Archbishop Sheen preached with eloquent sentences and dramatic hand gestures about God’s love and mercy.
And, Father Mann added, the archbishop could also deliver a joke, like his references to the “angels” (stagehands) who wiped clean his blackboard after he chalked expansive notes onto it.
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“He was a charismatic, one-of-a-kind person who will never be duplicated,” Father Mann said. “He was a spiritual man who fought communism and fascism back in the 1950s. And I often wonder, what if Sheen were alive today, looking at socialism and certain things going on in society and culture?
“I think Fulton Sheen would have a field day.”
