Hoover and Sheen

The beatification Mass of Bishop Sheen will be tomorrow at the Saint Louis Cathedral and will be live streamed.  Sheen’s encounter with the FBI and their noting that he talked his way out of a ticket with a cop in 1943, reminds me of my late friend Ollie Zivney.  A Navy Corpsman during World War II, he fought his way across the Pacific with the Marines and was one of the first US medics into Hiroshima after the Japanese surrender.  Following the War he became a Methodist minister.  When he made sick calls in Chicago he always wore his full clericals since the Chicago cops of that era treated Catholic priests like royalty.  Even after the Chicago cops realized their mistake, they called him “Father Ollie” and made sure he never got a ticket as he made his rounds.