FLANAGAN, EDWARD JOSEPH. — Prelate and educator, b. at Roscommon (Ireland) on 13 July 1886, d. in Berlin on 15 May 1948. He emigrated to the United States in 1904 and undertook religious studies, which, however, he had to interrupt repeatedly because of his 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, was ordained a priest. Returning to the United States (of which he acquired citizenship in 1918), he settled in Omaha (Nebraska), where he opened a lodging house for the poor.
Having become interested in the plight of wayward youth and deeply 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 an undertaking of social redemption that was to achieve wide renown and be extensively imitated, establishing in 1917 a home for destitute children. As the number of residents increased, he soon transferred the institution to an estate 11 miles from Omaha, where he founded the “City of Boys” (v.). In 1934 the home obtained from the United States government the status of an independent municipality, and in 1935 Fr. F. inaugurated there a form of self-government modeled on that of nearby Omaha. Through elections held every six months, the inhabitants of the “City of Boys,” 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 themselves the municipal authorities, which are also entrusted with the administration of justice (v. CITTÀ del).
The undertaking brought Fr. F. many recognitions, including his appointment as domestic prelate by Pius XI in 1938. After the Second World War, he was summoned by the American authorities to Japan and Germany to study the conditions of young people in the defeated countries and advise on how to remedy them. He died suddenly in Berlin during one of these missions.