A loving Catholic family at home in Ireland provided the leadership foundation and values Reverend Father Edward Flanagan According to experts on his life in Ireland, he founded Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska.
Flanagan, who was born and raised in the small village of Ballymoy, Ireland before immigrating to the United States, was declared Venerable by Pope Leo XIV on March 23.
Father Edward Flanagan left the Ballymoe Church in Ireland in 1946. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Father Flanagan Visitor Center
Fidelma and Alan Croghan of the Father Flanagan Group in Ballymoy provided EWTN News with information about the early years of the Irish priesthood. “He was the fourth youngest of 11 children. His father was a shepherd who looked after the livestock of an absentee landowner on the estate. They lived in a cottage here in Liebeg,” Fidelma said.
“Father Flanagan’s life from birth was lived in the loving embrace of a loving family. The night he was born, they didn’t think he would survive because he was so ill. He was a very sick man all his life due to poor lung health. The story is that his grandparents also lived in the house with him. So Grandfather took the little newborn and placed the baby skin to skin against his heart for the night, and Eddie survived.”
Fidelma shared that from the moment of her birth, Flanagan “knew the love and loving bond of a family; she had a very happy upbringing. Their home was full of music and happiness, neighbors came and played music and danced on the pebbles of the kitchen floor in front of a large open fire.”
He added: “He worked with his father as a shepherd boy tending sheep. He was interested in prayer and reading from a young age, and wrote about going out on the ground with his rosary and reading Dickens.”
Father Edward Flanagan and his brother PA Flanagan visit their sister in Ballymoy, Ireland in 1946. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Father Flanagan Visitor Center
After primary education at nearby Drumtemple National School, Flanagan attended Summerhill College, Sligo, the diocesan college of the Immaculate Conception, to complete his secondary education and prepare for life as a priest.
Alan Croghan said he had no doubt that the future priest’s upbringing and the family values ​​he adopted throughout his life were shaped by his origins and his upbringing in Ireland.
He said, “Our aim in Ireland is to educate people and tell them about this man who is going to America to do what he did in Boys Town. What he learned here in Ballymoy, he learned how to run a family.”
Father Edward Flanagan. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Father Flanagan Visitor Center
bishop kevin doran Achonry and Elphin told EWTN News: “Life of Father Flanagan And Virtue has a lot to say to us today, in a wealthy country where too many children are forced to survive homelessness, and in a world where we still find it too easy to define people as ‘hostile aliens.'”
Boys Town families and descendants frequently visit Ballymoy and Father Flanagan Visitor Center To see the famous priest’s hometown. Fidelma Croghan said: “We had a woman come to us two or three years ago, and she got down on her knees on the floor of the house, and cried, and cried, and cried, and said, ‘Only Father Flanagan saved my father; I wouldn’t be here.’ Another visitor told me: ‘I would have died as a young man, or spent my life in prison, if only for Boys Town.'”
The Flanagan Homestead in Ballymoy, Ireland, as it stands today. | Credit: Photo courtesy of Father Flanagan Visitor Center
If Flanagan’s experiences growing up in Ireland shaped his compassionate approach to the social issues he encountered in Nebraska, his experiences dealing with troubled boys and youth there influenced his reactions during a return visit to Ireland in 1946, when he visited the country’s reform schools.
They were deeply troubled by the poor conditions and treatment they received. Speaking about schools in Cork, he told the audience: “You are the people who allow your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it.” He described his country’s penal institutions as “a disgrace to the country.”
Flanagan had received letters from Ireland drawing attention to the brutal regime in these schools and he wanted to see for himself how bad conditions really were.
In response to his prophetic warnings, Gerald Boland, the Irish government’s Justice Minister at the time, told the Dáil (the Irish legislative chamber), “I was not prepared to pay any attention to what Monsignor Flanagan said when he was in this country, because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would give them any importance.”
The schools Flanagan visited included Artane and Letterfrack, institutions that eventually became notorious after the truth about the abuse inflicted on students there came to light.
