FLANAGAN, EDWARD JOSEPH. - Prelate and educator, b. at Roscommon (Ireland) on 13 July 1886, d. at Berlin on 15 May 1948. Having emigrated to the United States in 1904, he undertook religious studies, which, however, he had repeatedly to interrupt because of delicate health. In 1907-1908 he attended the Gregorian University and in 1912, after two years at the faculty of theology of the University of Innsbruck, he was ordained a priest. Having returned to the United States (of which he acquired citizenship in 1918), he settled in Omaha (Nebraska), where he opened a hostel for the poor.
Having become interested in the fate of wayward youth and being profoundly convinced of the need to offer a family to those who lacked one, in order to rescue them from the dangers of abandonment, he began a work of social redemption, which was to acquire wide renown and to be widely imitated, creating in 1917 a home for underprivileged children. As his guests increased, he soon transferred the institution to an estate 11 miles from Omaha, where he founded "Boys Town" (v.). In 1934 the house obtained from the government of the United States a charter of independent municipality, and in 1935 Fr. F. inaugurated there a form of self-government modeled on that of the neighboring Omaha. By means of semiannual elections the inhabitants of "Boys Town," among whom there are no distinctions of race or religion and who study and work, providing for the needs of the community and preparing to enter society, elect from among their own number the municipal authorities, to whom the administration of justice is also entrusted (v. RAGAZZI, CITTÀ del).
The work earned Fr. F. many recognitions, among them his appointment as domestic prelate of Pius XI in 1938. After the Second World War he was called by the American authorities to Japan and to Germany to study the conditions of youth in the defeated countries and to advise on how to remedy them. He died suddenly in Berlin during one of these missions.