‘Clear as day’: Cuba parishioner played catch with Blessed Bishop Sheen, helped him get a ride on a firetruck
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It wasn’t a chariot that swung low to carry Bishop Fulton J. Sheen through a sultry St. Louis neighborhood one Sunday in 1958.
It was a bright red firetruck filled with memories he and others would cherish for the rest of their lives.
“It’s been so many years, but I remember clear as day when Bishop Sheen visited our neighborhood,” said Jim Bathe, a Holy Cross parishioner in Cuba, who grew up in the former Most Holy Rosary Parish in St. Louis’s Penrose Neighborhood.
On Sept. 24 in St. Louis, Bishop Sheen (1895-1979), a prolific American Catholic author, preacher, evangelizer, promoter of international missions and universally-recognized television personality in the 1950s and ’60s, was declared Blessed, one step from being formally recognized as a saint.
Mr. Bathe and his niece were among the 50,000 people who attended the elaborate and joyful Beatification Mass in the Dome at America’s Center.
Bishop Sheen visited Mr. Bathe’s tight, working-class neighborhood when Mr. Bathe was 12.
Mr. Bathe grew up next door to the family home of Father (later Archbishop) Edward O’Meara, who went on to become a longtime friend and collaborator with Blessed Sheen.
Mr. Bathe was friends with Fr. O’Meara’s nephew, John Christy.
“Bishop Sheen asked Fr. O’Meara to be his assistant at the Society for the Propagation of the Faith,” Mr. Bathe noted. “Bishop Sheen was close to the O’Meara family. Whenever he’d come to St. Louis, he’d go to the O’Mearas for lunch on Sunday.”
The Bathes and O’Mearas were also close.
“When Fr. O’Meara got ordained, my sister was part of the procession,” Mr. Bathe recalled. “When my sister got married in ’59, he came to the breakfast.”
Once while Fr. O’Meara was in Rome, he brought back to Mrs. Bathe a framed apostolic blessing from Venerable Pope Pius XII (+1938-1958).
Beyond belief
One of Bishop Sheen’s Sunday visits to St. Louis found Mr. Bathe and Fr. O’Meara’s nephew playing catch on the front lawn.
“I threw the ball to Bishop Sheen, and he threw it back to me,” Mr. Bathe recalled.
A little later, while visiting on the O’Meara family’s front porch, Bishop Sheen watched a firetruck go by.
The bishop wistfully declared: “I always wanted to ride in a firetruck.”
He was in luck. Mr. Bathe, who was 12 or 13 at the time, often hung out at Engine House 26, a half-block from his home, playing cards with the fireman and locking up for them whenever they’d head out on a call.
“I told him I knew all the firemen up there,” Mr. Bathe recalled.
He ran up the street to where the firemen were trying to stay cool on the driveway outside the station.
“It was summer, and there was no air conditioning,” he noted.
The teen told Capt. Neil Boyle that Bishop Sheen was at the O’Mearas’ house and would like a ride on a firetruck.
Bishop Sheen was a well-known, top-rated television personality at that time. What would he be doing in North St. Louis on a Sunday afternoon?
“They basically said I’m full of it,” Mr. Bathe recounted. “Capt. Boyle said, ‘If he’s out there, bring him here and we’ll give him a ride.’”
Shortly thereafter, Bishop Sheen, Fr. O’Meara, his nephew and Mr. Bathe made their way toward the firehouse.
“You should have seen the firemen when they saw Bishop Sheen walking up the street,” Mr. Bathe recalled. “A bunch of them ran into the firehouse and were tearing down the girly pictures.”
The captain called the St. Louis fire chief, who gave permission to give Bishop Sheen and Fr. O’Meara — “but not the kids” — a ride around the neighborhood.
The priest and bishop returned from the excursion and stayed around the firehouse, visiting.
One of the firemen ran home to grab a camera.
A neighbor recognized Bishop Sheen and asked him to come and bless her family home.
“She told her husband, ‘John, Bishop Sheen is coming to bless the house,’” Mr. Bathe recalled. “Her husband was so excited, he dropped a six-pack of beer.”
Bishop Sheen then blessed the Bathes’ and O’Mearas’ houses, the firehouse, the fire engine and much of the rest of the neighborhood.
“Then we sat down on the O’Mearas’ porch for a while to relax,” said Mr. Bathe.
“Salvation and Service”
St. Louis, especially in those days, was known to many as the Rome of the West, due to its numerous churches and robust Catholic culture.
Many of the ethnic neighborhoods and parishes were still inhabited by first-, second- and third-generation immigrants while Mr. Bathe was growing up.
About 10 years after that memorable day in the neighborhood, Fr. O’Meara’s father passed away, and Mr. Bathe went to the visitation at a local funeral home.
The priest recognized Mr. Bathe right away. But would Bishop Sheen?
“We walked up to him and Fr. O’Meara said, ‘He’s the one who got you a ride on the firetruck,’” Mr. Bathe recalled.
Bishop Sheen immediately remembered Mr. Bathe by name, hugged him, thanked him and said something to the effect of, “Every time I see a firetruck, I think of the first and only time I got to ride on one.”
Fr. O’Meara in 1966 succeeded Bishop Sheen as head of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.
Appointed auxiliary bishop of St. Louis in 1972, was ordained to the episcopacy by Pope St. Paul VI in St. Peter’s Basilica.
He preached the homily at Bishop Sheen’s Funeral Mass in 1979 and was installed as archbishop of Indianapolis a few weeks later.
Cardinal Joseph E. Ritter, who had ordained Fr. O’Meara to the Priesthood, previously served as archbishop of Indianapolis before becoming archbishop of St. Louis.
Mr. Bathe eventually became a firefighter, first in Normandy and then in Chesterfield.
His sons also became firefighters, and a grandson has now joined them.
Mr. Bathe and his wife bought a home near Cuba about 40 years ago and moved there in 2022.
Archbishop O’Meara died in 1992. The Catholic Center in Indianapolis is named in his honor.
His episcopal motto was “Salvation and Service.”
“Nice chickens”
Mr. Bathe’s story has been intriguing people for years.
When Father James Finder was pastor at Holy Cross, he incredulously inquired, “You mean you played catch with a future saint?”
Deacon Richard Vise, who assists the pastor of the Cuba, Bourbon and Steelville parishes, advised Mr. Bathe to share his story with the Fulton Sheen Foundation, which maintains a museum in his honor in Peoria, Illinois.
Mr. Bathe called and spoke to Sister Lea Stefancova of the Franciscan Sisters of John the Baptist, the museum’s archivist and co-postulator for Bishop Sheen’s sainthood cause.
“She told me, ‘You have to come up here,’” said Mr. Bathe. “She wanted to see the picture and hear the story.”
Mr. Bathe said, “I’m 81, and that’s two and a half or three hours from Cuba.”
“That’s not far,” the sister replied.
Mr. Bathe wound up driving there with his niece.
“I’m glad I went,” said Mr. Bathe. “If you ever get a chance to go to Peoria, it’s worth the drive. It’s a really neat museum, and the Cathedral where they buried him is beautiful.”
He said the statue of Bishop Sheen in the museum is an exact likeness of how he looked the time Mr. Bathe saw him at the funeral home.
“Sister Lea told me that Bishop Sheen was brought up on a farm,” Mr. Bathe recalled. “His job was to take care of the chickens and he just hated it.”
That unlocked a nearly 70-year-old memory for Mr. Bathe.
“I forgot until he mentioned it that when he was standing in our yard and found out that we have chickens, he wanted to go see them,” said Mr. Bathe.
It must have triggered some nostalgia for one of this country’s most effective Catholic evangelizers.
“He didn’t say anything about hating taking care of them,” Mr. Bathe recalled. “He just looked at them and said, ‘nice chickens.’”
“Make way!”
Mr. Bathe and his niece traveled to St. Louis on Sept. 24 to attend Bishop Sheen’s Beatification Mass in the Dome at America’s Center.
In January 1999, he accompanied 13 cloistered Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters, known as the Pink Sisters due to the color of their habits, from their monastery to the same venue for Mass celebrated by Pope St. John Paul II (+1978-2005).
The sisters, who had been praying for good weather for the Pope’s late January visit, had gotten a dispensation from the archbishop and other Church authorities to leave their monastery and attend the Mass with the pope.
Their prayers and those of many others had been answered — it was 72 degrees and sunny the morning of the Mass.
Mr. Bathe had served as a pallbearer at several of the sisters’ funerals in the past, so they trusted him to give them there and safely back home.
“Please make way for the Pink Sisters!” he remembers calling through the crowd. “It was like Moses parting the Red Sea, and they walked right through.”
“Maybe a favor”
Mr. Bathe’s ancestors hailed from Argyle, Koeltztown, Linn and Westphalia.
His grandfather helped establish St. Aloysius Parish in Argyle in 1910 and once traveled to St. Louis to get permission from the archbishop for the parish to purchase a new organ.
Mr. Bathe’s mother grew up in Linn and moved to Argyle to teach school.
That’s where she met Mr. Bathe’s dad. The school did not let married women teach, so she had to step down when the couple got married.
He and his family say “BAY-thee,” but people in Argyle still use the German pronunciation, “BAT-hee,” he said.
Shortly after Bishop Sheen died, Mr. Bathe applied for a new job as a firefighter for the Monarch Fire Protection District in Chesterfield.
It was a good opportunity for him.
“I remember thinking, ‘Bishop Sheen, I’d love to get hired here,’” he said. “‘Could you ask God to help me?’”
He got hired that afternoon.
“I wouldn’t call it a miracle,” said Mr. Bathe, “but maybe a favor from the same God who led a future saint to our little neighborhood to play catch and take a ride on a firetruck.”
