El Paso

laughing.

Well, he was born in Illinois, El Paso,

where he was devout.

He's oldest.

There's an El Paso, Illinois.

And then he was born.

There's an El Paso, Illinois.

So, yeah.

But then there's archives in Peoria.

There's archives in El Paso, Illinois.

There's archives in Washington, D.C. with the Catholic University.

Archives in New York where he was the auxiliary bishop.

I'm Hiba Ahmed, St. Louis Public Radio.

There's a headstone in the central Illinois town of El Paso for the first black man to cast a ballot in the state.

But historians aren't sure if that's where David Strother is actually buried.

Lizzie Siles followed along as board members with the Project 15 Voting Rights Museum searched for the grave, with a little help from an Illinois State University anthropology professor and a high-tech device.

a tall reddish headstone sits near the back of evergreen cemetery in el paso about 20 feet away from a row of corn it proudly displays the name of david a struther who was born in 1843 and died in 1905 and tells us he was the first black man to cast a ballot in illinois after the 15th amendment was ratified The El Paso Post of the American Legion erected that headstone in 1954 because they think it's where Strother was buried.

But a group of passionate local historians want to know that for certain.

Barb Lancaster with the Project 15 Voting Rights Museum in El Paso has been hoping this day would come.

My family and friends would tease me that I love my dead people, but it's true.

Well, this is the 30,000-foot biography.

He was born in El Paso, Illinois, which is about 25 miles east of downtown Peoria.

His family moved to Peoria when he was a young boy so he could get a Catholic education.

He was serving Mass one day at the cathedral for Bishop Spalding, and as the story goes, he broke the cruet, and he thought he was going to get yelled at by the bishop, but the bishop was very kind and told him that one day he would follow in his footsteps studying at Louvain.

And so in celebration of this moment and all of the years that have been leading up to it, I decided that this month's podcast should not only be about Sheen's own life and his path towards being canonized a saint, but also how does the entire process work in general? So how does someone become recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church? But before we really get into all of that, since this is in celebration of Fulton Sheen's beatification, I want to talk about real quick who was and who is really Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

So he was born on May 8th, 1897 in El Paso, Illinois.

And it's this small town in the Diocese of Peoria.

He was born Peter John Sheen, and he was the oldest of four boys born to his mom, Newton and Delia.

And so for Fulton Sheen, just...

All of these numerous accounts of miracles attributed to his intercession, they were submitted to various dioceses where these healings occurred.

But the most important one for him became the case of an infant in 2010 in the diocese of Peoria in his own hometown, his own birthplace of El Paso.

So the story is that Travis and Bonnie Engstrom, they felt this special connection with Fulton Sheen, Bonnie especially.

Yeah, Bishop Sheen was a genius.

I mean, the story of his rise from humble beginnings in El Paso, Illinois, to a world-class academic excellence of global celebrity as a preacher and maker of converts will be told in many places as we approach the beatification in St. Louis the end of September.

Boy, you can count on that.

But it's worth touching on a few details of his rise and what it might tell us about his own.

... with my Illinois exposure, but-

But that is, look, we're here, I can tell you that he went to high school in El Paso, Illinois, which is also around there.

Okay.

Uh, and played college baseball at the University of Illinois in, uh, Urbana-Champaign.