Boys Town's Fr Flanagan. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Bishop of Achonry and Elphin Kevin Doran welcomed the news that RTÉ One will broadcast a feature documentary Heart of a Servant – Father Flanagan story on July 6, citing the documentary as an “excellent production focusing on a very important personality in our recent faith history.”
Born in Bishop Doran’s own diocese, Boys Town founder Fr Edward Joseph Flanagan is a “role model for clergy, lay people and for wider society in terms of the Gospel-inspired priority that he gave to child welfare,” said the bishop.
Bishop Doran continued to praise the initiative of the Irish priest in founding the organisation Boys Town, which he said “flourished to become a place where young people could feel at home, and have all the advantages of a solid education and formation for life.”
“Fr Flanagan’s initiative to care for children irrespective of their faith, colour or ethnic background was counter-cultural for the time, and proved to be hugely controversial.”
The Boys Town founder’s legacy has been widely recognised this year, as Fr Flanagan was one of six people declared venerable by Pope Leo in March. In his address Bishop Doran urged people of faith to pray for the priest’s beatification and take him as a “model of Christian living”. According to the bishop, the priest’s holiness emerged from his “desire to help young people realise that they are loved by God”, evident in his statement that “kindness and love will open the heart of any problem boy.”