日本語要約

2026年9月24日に米国セントルイスで列福された福者フルトン・シーン大司教について、出身教区であるピオリア教区のルイス・ティルカ司教は10月5日、バチカンでの私的謁見で教皇レオ14世にシーンの聖遺物を献呈しました。司教は、列聖調査のために報告されている6件の奇跡について列聖省と協議を始めたと語りました。また同教区は、シーンが学んだ旧高校の建物に博物館・文化センター「シーン・エクスペリエンス」を計画しており、シーン自身の著作や録音された教えのみに基づいて来館者の質問に答える、AIによる対話型ホログラムも含まれます。試作版はすでにピオリアの司牧センターで公開されています。この計画には、亡くなった人をAIで再現することの是非をめぐる疑問も出ています。

Weeks after Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was beatified in St Louis on 24 September 2026, his home Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, is pressing ahead on two fronts: the cause for his canonisation and a new centre to introduce the famous broadcaster to a new generation.

On 5 October, Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria presented Pope Leo XIV with a relic of Blessed Fulton Sheen during a private audience at the Vatican, accompanied by Msgr Jason Gray, executive director of the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Foundation. In a statement reported by OSV News, the bishop called it a profound joy to place a relic of a son of the Diocese of Peoria into the hands of the first American pope, both of them from Illinois. He said the Holy Father’s own interest in Sheen shows that his witness still speaks to the Church today.

Speaking to the Vatican Access podcast (21 October), Bishop Tylka said the Pope congratulated the diocese on the beatification and encouraged it to keep working toward canonisation. While in Rome, the diocese also met the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to begin examining six reported miracles attributed to Sheen’s intercession.

The bishop also described the planned “Sheen Experience”, a museum and cultural centre in the former Peoria high school building where Sheen studied. Alongside a traditional museum telling his story, it is to include an interactive AI hologram of Sheen. The bishop explained that visitors would be able to ask questions, with answers drawn only from what Sheen himself wrote and said. A prototype is already open to visitors in a small room at the diocesan pastoral centre. The Catholic Herald reports that the museum is planned at a cost of about $50 million, and that the hologram has raised questions about recreating a person who has died.

Born in El Paso, Illinois, in 1895 and ordained for the Diocese of Peoria in 1919, Sheen reached millions through radio’s “The Catholic Hour” and the Emmy-winning television series “Life Is Worth Living”. He died in New York on 9 December 1979.

Note from Evangelii Network Japan: Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica humanitas asks that technology serve the human person and safeguard human dignity. ENJ will follow with interest how the Sheen Experience presents and labels its AI-generated answers.

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