IN 1989, I WAS ordained a priest for the Diocese of Orange. After serving as parochial vicar in a number of parishes of the diocese, I was appointed the director for the Office of Ecumenical and Inter-religion Affairs, located at Marywood Pastoral Center in Orange. There are great memories of work on “the hill,” however, one memory especially stands out and that is the day I interviewed Miss Edythe Brownett.
Edythe had spent most of her life back east. Her sister entered the Society of the Holy Child Jesus taking the name, Sr. Mary Magdalen. In later years, she went back to her given name, Sr. Marlene Ann Brownett. It was Archbishop Sheen who had introduced her to the Holy Child Sisters. After the death of Archbishop Sheen, she became a great supporter of his cause for canonization and was a member on the Board of Directors of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation.
It was her sister, Edythe, though, that this story is really about. Edythe not only knew Archbishop Sheen but became his lifelong personal secretary. She relocated for a time to Orange County, California, and that was how I met her. The process for the canonization of Archbishop Sheen had begun and they needed testimony from Edythe. Then Fr. Tim Freyer, Vicar for Priests, asked me if I would meet with Edythe and conduct the “positio” or investigation for the first step in the process, Servant of God. I had never been involved in a process of canonization and the opportunity to be a part of Archbishop Sheen’s was too exciting to pass up. I was given an unopened, large and heavy dossier from the Vatican, the contents of which were page after page of questions regarding the person and ministry of Archbishop Sheen.
A word about the positio. The dossier is a compilation of evidence gathered for the cause of someone being considered for sainthood.
It can even be thousands of pages long, functioning almost like a court case for the candidate. I remember being amazed at how thick and heavy the file was. Prepared by the Vatican appointed postulator, the dossier contains the candidate’s life story, spiritual life, apostolate and work, witness of virtue, witness of vice and anything that might stop the candidate’s process. Persons interviewed are those that knew the candidate, worked for him, family members and others. All letters, books, diaries, homilies and private correspondence are examined. If anything problematic comes up it could derail the whole process.
The process is ponderous but necessarily so. Fortunately, with Archbishop Sheen, so many who knew him personally were still alive and able to give testimony. Part of the process is that the interviewer must not divulge names and details of the interview. I can say that what did come through all those hours of interviewing was that Archbishop Sheen was a good priest. He loved Christ, the Church and the priesthood. He was a man of prayer and hope. Perhaps his greatest gift was communicating the Catholic faith. There are countless stories of people coming to God and Catholic faith through him. His show, “Life is Worth Living,” was how the nation got to know him. We knew him best as a bishop in love with his vocation and on fire for God and truth.
Edythe passed on to God in 2007. Sr. Marlene Ann Brownett, SHCJ, died at the age of 90 in 2024. Each sister, in her own way, was a part of the process that has brought the great Archbishop Sheen to this rare place of Blessed among the saints.