FLANAGAN, EDWARD JOSEPH. Prelate and educator, b. at Roscommon (Ireland) 13 July 1886, d. at Berlin 15 May 1948. Emigrating to the United States in 1904, he began religious studies, which he had to interrupt repeatedly because of delicate health. In 1907-1908 he attended the Gregorian University; in 1912, after two years at the faculty of theology of the University of Innsbruck, he was ordained priest. Returning to the United States (of which he acquired citizenship in 1918), he settled at Omaha (Nebraska), where he opened a hostel for the poor.
Interested in the fate of wayward youth and deeply convinced of the need to offer a family to those who lacked one in order to redeem them from the dangers of abandonment, he began a work of social redemption that was to gain wide renown and be widely imitated. In 1917 he established a home for destitute boys. As the number of his charges increased, he soon transferred the institution to an estate 11 miles from Omaha, where he founded the City of Boys (v. I). In 1934 it obtained from the U.S. government the status of an independent municipality, and in 1935 Fr. Flanagan inaugurated there a form of self-government modeled on that of nearby Omaha. By means of semiannual elections, 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 their own ranks the municipal authorities, to whom is also entrusted the administration of justice (v. CITTÀ dei).
The work brought Fr. Flanagan many honors, including his appointment as domestic prelate by Pius XI in 1938. After World War II he was called by the American authorities to Japan and Germany to study the condition of youth in the defeated countries and advise on how to remedy II. He died suddenly in Berlin during one of these missions.