A PRIEST FROM Co Galway has moved one step closer to sainthood.
Pope Leo XIV today authorised for six people to advance towards sainthood and Father Edward Flanagan, born in Ballymoe in Co Galway in 1886, was among these individuals.
A Father Flanagan Memorial Centre has developed in Ballymoe, which includes a memorial garden and a pilgrim centre.
Fr Flanagan emigrated to the US with his sister in 1904 and founded an orphanage and education centre called Boys Town in Nebraska.
His work became more widely known after the release of a biographical film called Boys Town in 1938.
Spencer Tracey portrayed Fr Flanagan in the film and won an Oscar for Best Actor.
The film also won an Oscar for Best Story, a category which was discontinued in 1956.
In 2012, the diocese of Omaha in Nebraska initiated the process of canonisation for Fr Flanagan and the case was accepted the same year, at which point Fr Flanagan was declared a Servant of God.
Today Pope Leo recognised Fr Flanagan’s “heroic virtues,” which means the late priest now has a second title: Venerable.
Bishop Kevin Doran is Bishop of Achonry and of Elphin and he said it was “wonderful” to hear of today’s announcement that Fr Flanagan has been declared Venerable.
Bishop Doran said Fr Flanagan had founded Boys Town in a “time of crisis when many young people were living rough on the streets and getting in trouble with the law”.
He added that Boys Town “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”.
Bishop Doran also noted that on a visit to Ireland in 1946, Fr Flanagan “raised serious questions about the imprisonment of children and the conditions in which they were forced to live and work”.
He also remarked that Fr Flanagan “stood up against the sectarianism of many in the establishment, and the racist ideology of the Ku Klux Klan, and insisted on welcoming young people of all races and religions in Boys Town”.
“During the Second World War, when Japanese workers and their families in the United States were all interned as ‘hostile aliens’, Father Flanagan arranged for many of them to be set free to come and live in Boys Town,” said Bishop Doran.
“When the war was over, he devoted what remained of his life to visiting some of the countries which had been most impacted by violence in order to support efforts to provide the best possible care for homeless children.”
It was during one such visit in 1948 to Germany that Fr Flanagan died of a heart attack.
Bishop Doran added that Fr Flanagan’s “life and virtue have much to say to us today, in a wealthy country where so many children are forced to live with homelessness, and in a world in which we still find it so easy to define people as ‘hostile aliens’.”
Path to sainthood
The next step towards sainthood is beatification, which follows a rigorous investigation into the person’s life and a posthumous miracle must also be attributed to them – the title of “Blessed” is bestowed to a person who has been beatified.
After being beatified, a second miracle is then required for a person to be canonised and made a saint.
The Catholic Church defines a miracle as a “sign or wonder such as a healing, or control of nature, which can only be attributed to divine power”.
For something to be formally recognised by the Church as a miracle, two-thirds of a medical board consisting of at least six doctors are required to sign a statement affirming that the supposed miraculous event cannot be explained by natural causes.
The miraculous recovery must also be a complete, spontaneous, immediate healing from a documented medical condition.
Bishop Doran called on people to make contact with him or the Father Flanagan League of Devotion if they “believe that an unexplained healing has taken place”.