Posted by For more than 100 years, Boys Town has been a trusted charity, started by Father Edward Flanagan, whose embrace of children from all races, colors, and creeds ran counter to the views of many in his era. His selfless service and heroic virtue put him on the road to sainthood, and he was recently declared “Venerable” by the Vatican.
Two men who played a major role in moving his cause forward – Tom Lynch and Steve Wolf – joined me on “Christopher Closeup” (podcast below) to discuss his life and the legacy he left behind.
Born in 1886 in County Roscommon, Ireland, Edward Flanagan hailed from a devout Catholic family. He faced some medical challenges as a child and received loving, nurturing care, which shaped his own personality. Because his father was a herdsman and tenant farmer, Edward also learned to tend sheep, going after the lost ones who needed rescuing.
Boys Town historian Tom Lynch noted that Venerable Father Flanagan’s environment at home and abroad also impacted his approach to others: “In the 1880s, Ireland was a colony of Britain. And so, the Irish faith, the language, the history had for centuries been discouraged, if not outlawed in some instances. He saw what it was like to be different, even though he was in his home country…He immigrated to America when he was 18 years old, in 1903…And here he was, in [New York City] with millions of other people of different races and religions, and he saw how they were treated…Many towns put up signs saying, ‘No Irish, no Catholics, welcome.’…But he always had the idea and concept, ‘I want to treat everyone as an individual,’ and that’s what he advocated his entire life.”
Venerable Father Flanagan moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where he started working with the poor and homeless. He soon found that preteen and teenage boys would come into the shelters for adult men because they had nowhere else to go. These boys were either forced to live on the streets or arrested and sent to jail or reform school. Father Flanagan decided to help, so he opened Boys Town in 1917 to provide a loving home for these young people, regardless of race, color or creed.
Steve Wolf, an executive producer of the Christopher Award-winning documentary “Heart of a Servant: The Father Flanagan Story,” explained, “[Father] saw every child…[as] made in the likeness and image of God. So many other people at that time were looking for the differences among us – ‘Oh, I can’t help this Black child, I can’t help this Jewish child.’ [There were] all these different reasons that people would come up with to divide humanity, as opposed to seeing everybody the way God does and the way Father Flanagan did, which is that every child is a child of God and they all deserve love and they deserve justice and to be treated with dignity and respect. I think that’s what was absolutely revolutionary, if not outright radical [about him] in our country at that time and in our history.”
Tom Lynch noted that not everyone was thrilled with Father Flanagan’s welcoming approach: “In America at the time, there was a theory called eugenics. Eugenics was a horrific idea that said certain people were superior to others. It was used in America at the turn of the century against people that were immigrating from Eastern Europe and Hispanics, African Americans, Irish Catholics. They were considered inferior, and it wasn’t worth the time and effort to educate them or to care for them. [Some people said] they were polluting American society. Father Flanagan said, ‘That is not correct.’ He created Boys Town to destroy that theory of eugenics. He was part of the Catholic Church that stood up against that theory and concept because eventually it was used in Europe for the Holocaust. And so Father Flanagan, as Steve said, saw the value in every child. He said, ‘You cannot throw away children. They’re our future. The way we treat our children is the way our society will be in the future.'”
Steve Wolf has personal experience with Boys Town because he grew up there, though long after Venerable Father Flanagan died. He said the reason that Boys Town, which also now welcomes girls, continues to thrive is because “we call that place a home. I think the essential ingredient that you have to have for anyone to call a place a home is love. And I think that separates Boys Town and what Father Flanagan did there from other institutions…I think that’s the secret sauce of why it still continues. And Father himself said before he passed away that the work will continue ‘whether I’m there or not because it’s God’s work, not mine.'”
Venerable Father Flanagan’s work eventually gained the notice of Hollywood, which led to the 1938 hit movie “Boys Town,” starring Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan. That spread the priest’s message to a whole new audience.
Tom said, “He was an Irish Catholic priest in Omaha, Nebraska who created a home with a borrowed $90. Twenty-five years later, he’s sitting in the White House with the President of the United States and the president is saying, ‘We need 49 more Father Flanagans, one for every state and territory.’ His ideas were adopted as a norm. And he worked with the press. He worked with William Randolph Hearst of the New Hearst Newspapers to spread his message. He would go to locations across America where he felt children were being abused or not treated properly…He would be on the radio [and] developed his own program called Links of Love, uniting America with the idea of taking care of these children….It was very revolutionary when people went to see that movie, [Boys Town]. It broke box office records because it presented a community where children were living together of all different races and religions as one family, because he intentionally created one of the first integrated communities in America.”
Boys Town continued to grow and thrive, even after Father Flanagan’s death in 1948. In 1999, Ken Suddeth, a Korean War orphan who had been raised in Boys Town, set forth the idea to a group of alumni to have Father Flanagan declared a saint. One of those alumni was Steve Wolf, who went on to become president of the Father Flanagan League and the longest serving director on its board.
Steve explained that the effort began with “fits and starts” the first few years before the group petitioned the bishop to open a case for Father Flanagan’s sainthood. Archbishop Curtis explained that the group needed to “pray, pray, pray” for this and demonstrate “a groundswell of devotion” for Father Flanagan.
Steve recalled, “We started a prayer group that, at that time, met once a month in Father’s tomb – today it meets every Tuesday – and it just took off from there. Next thing you know, we find out that he has devotees all over the world. We’ve got connections with people from over 20 countries. We’ve distributed hundreds of thousands of prayer cards…We were able to go back to the bishop several years later and show him all the evidence that we had…At that time, it was Archbishop George Lucas, who said, ‘I think there’s definitely the Holy Spirit working among you all. I will open the cause.’ That happened in 2012. So it took us a while to get there, but we just kept at it…Then the case moved on to Rome in 2015. So here we are, basically 11 years later, with Venerable Edward J. Flanagan.”
Tom Lynch was also part of this process, as he was appointed to the historical commission for Venerable Father Flanagan’s cause of sainthood by the Archbishop. Tom and his team went through thousands of pages of Father Flanagan’s writings and “selected materials that I felt would represent him in his holiness and his work because we had to study his spiritual life and his life amongst society and working with politicians and ordinary people. So all that material was gathered and then eventually it was reviewed by tribunals here in Omaha and then sent on to Rome.”
The next stage in the process involves people praying for Father Flanagan to intercede for them and work the two miracles required for sainthood. Steve and Tom believe that the “Heart of a Servant” documentary, the Father Flanagan League website, and Boys Town will all further direct people to Father Flanagan to serve as a role model for their lives and a spiritual intercessor.
Steve said, “We always see signs from the Holy Spirit that God is in this cause and with us. And when I say with us, with all of us, all His creation. I think He certainly is helping us to hold Venerable Flanagan up to the world as an icon of how to work with kids and the most vulnerable in our society – and how to really recognize that the person in front of you is made in the likeness and image of God and is worthy of respect and dignity and love.”
(To listen to the full interview with Tom Lynch and Steve Wolf, click on the podcast link):
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