For those of you who are too young to know who he was, Archbishop Sheen was the face of Catholicism for decades years in the USA.
Sometimes famous people have unusual, important sounding names and you have to wonder if their path through life was affected by their name. At least the name is going to draw people's attention and cause them to remember it. But maybe this also reflects back on the development of the individual. Or maybe people who are destined to be important, even from their youth, take on a name to match.
One way to pull this off is to use a surname as your first name. Apparently this is common in the South. Archbishop Sheen was born Peter John Sheen, but apparently went by his mother's maiden name his whole life.
President Franklin Roosevelt and Vice President Schuyler Colfax were both from New York and had surnames for their first names. Harrison Ford was born in Chicago.
It may be true that the practice of doing that is more common in Southern states.