Madam, - I read with interest the recent contributions in your newspaper on Father Flanagan and Irish institutions. I hope these will help many to appreciate more deeply the mission and ministry of this Catholic priest who responded with great courage and a generous spirit to the needs of youth, often doing such work in a critical enviroment.
I am engaged with others in supporting the Girls' and Boys' Town Alumni, USA, in promoting the cause of Father Edward Joseph Flanagan through prayer groups and promotion materials here in Ireland.
Father Flanagan was born in Leabeg, Ballymoe, Co Roscommon on July 13th, 1886. After secondary education at Summerhill College, Sligo, he left Ireland in 1904 and began his studies for the priesthood in colleges and universities in the US, Rome and Innsbruck, Austria, where he was ordained on the feast of St Anne, July 26th, 1912.
Back in the US, he took up his ministry in Omaha, Nebraska. From the outset he served the poor, first by opening a home for elderly homeless people. At this time he was shocked by the plight of poor boys on the streets of Omaha. He rented a house which he called "Father Flanagan's Boys' Home" in 1917. The boys were homeless or in trouble with the courts. He brought kindness, hospitality and a good education and holiness to those neglected boys. He encouraged the boys to set up their own systems of local self-government, electing a mayor, municipal officers, a court of students, a post office, barber shop, a print office (including their own newspaper), laundry service, farming services, etc. And so the "home" became a "town".
Famous phrases associated with Boystown include: "There is no such thing as a bad boy"; "He ain't heavy, he's my brother, Father"; and "the work will continue, you see, whether I am there or not because it's God's work and not mine". Father Flanagan was immortalised in the Oscar-winning 1938 movie Boystown, starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. He travelled to many countries at the request of several US presidents to help children in need. He died on one such journey in Berlin on May 15th, 1948. His remains are located at Boystown.
Anybody interested in supporting the cause of Fr Flanagan can check www.elphindiocese.ie/flan/flan2.htm, or the US website www.fatherflanagan.org, or write to me at the address below.
I would like to thank The Irish Times for facilitating discussion of Father Flanagan and his legacy, which continues to inspire many people who see in him a person who reached out to the most vunerable in society, and helped America change its way of caring for its youth and families. May his life inspire us to do the same in today's world. - Yours, etc.,
Rev ALAN CONWAY, C.C,
St Mary's,
Sligo.