Padre Flanagan: prete irlandese che ha fondato Boys Town sul cammino della santità

Interesting reading about his interactions with Ireland clipped from various articles:

>But Flanagan was unhappy with what he found in Ireland. He was dismayed at the state of Ireland’s reform schools and blasted them as “a scandal, un-Christ-like, and wrong.” And he said the Christian Brothers, founded by Edmund Rice, had lost their way.

>Speaking to a large audience at a public lecture in Cork’s Savoy Cinema he said, “You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it.” He called Ireland’s penal institutions “a disgrace to the nation,” and later said, “I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character.”

>When he came back to America, Flanagan, addressing the Irish clergy and political leaders, said: “What you need over there is to have someone shake you loose from your smugness and satisfaction and set an example by punishing those who are guilty of cruelty, ignorance, and neglect of their duties in high places . . . I wonder what God’s judgment will be with reference to those who hold the deposit of faith and who fail in their God-given stewardship of little children.”

>Justice minister Gerard Boland said: “The Government is not disposed to take any notice of what Fr Flanagan has said because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance to them.”

That name is suspect as fuck