An Irish artist commissioned to make a statue of Archbishop Fulton Sheen for New York’s famous St Malachy Church, also known as the Actors’ Chapel, has said he hopes the work will inspire a new generation of devotees to the archbishop.
Dublin-based sculptor Dony MacManus is working on the 10ft-tall piece, which is expected to be installed in the chapel in Manhattan’s theatre district in early 2016.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin blessed the work in progress during a ceremony at the artist’s Dublin studio.
Fr Richard Baker, chapel pastor, travelled to Dublin with a delegation of parishioners for the ceremony. He said he felt inspired to commission the monument because of Archbishop Sheen’s “special interest in the acting community” and the parish’s vicinity to Broadway.
“This is the first job that I’ve done where I’ve really been excited by the subject, because of the archbishop’s dynamic and the video footage,” the sculptor said.
He said he hoped the image would be “a point of ignition for people who view it to ask themselves: ‘Who is this guy?’ and go and check him out.”
Fr Baker said that the parish felt Archbishop Sheen was the “perfect person” to be commemorated at St Malachy.
“We hope he will inspire spirituality in a community that needs that support, a community that works in an atmosphere that is severely anti-Catholic and drawing people away from the Faith rather than strengthening it,” he said.
Fr Sheen began broadcasting in 1930. His television show Life is Worth Living gained large audiences from the 1950s. He died in 1979 aged 84 and was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.
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