Father Flanagan devotees rejoice as his cause advances

Edward Morse was up before 7 a.m. on Monday, March 23, getting ready to feed cattle at his Iowa farm. Then his cell phone blew up with text messages.

He learned that Servant of God Father Edward J. Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town, had been declared venerable by Pope Leo XIV.

The official announcement had to sink in for the president of the Father Flanagan League Society of Devotion: Father Flanagan just made a huge leap in the Church’s canonization process.

“We’d been waiting for quite a long time – or it seems like it,” said Morse, a Creighton University law professor. “Not a long time in Church time, not a long time in the history of causes for sainthoods, but nevertheless. I guess we’re an impatient lot. We like things to move.”

Morse  said he was thrilled “to hear this news and to have it to share.”

So were others in the Father Flanagan League.

“I’m in a state of ecstasy, honestly,” said Steven Wolf, former president and director of the league and a Boys Town graduate. Pope Leo’s announcement Monday was “stunning, in a wonderful way.”

COURTESY OF BOYS TOWN

The news was especially impactful for Boys Town alumni. “We know this man saved our lives,” said Wolf, from the class of 1980.

“For a place to be called home, there has to be love there,” he said. “Father Flanagan brought God’s love.”

For Wolf, too, getting to this point in the canonization process seemed like an eternity.

But as the process moved from the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to Pope Leo in just days, the movement seemed lightning fast, said Wolf, who now lives in Florida but remains active with the Father Flanagan League.

He is a founding member of the organization, which began in 2001 with a groundswell of support from Boys Town graduates who were acquainted with the holiness of their founder. They were quickly surrounded by other supporters.

COURTESY OF BOYS TOWN

The league became a corporation, which is under the guidance of the Catholic Church, and a formal advocate for Father Flanagan’s canonization.

To raise awareness about the priest, the league helped make a documentary about Father Flanagan, which was released in 2024. The organization also supports a visitor center in Father Flanagan’s native village, Ballymoe, Ireland.

Other efforts to further his legacy include developing materials aimed at young people.

Now, 25 years after it was first formed, the league can pause, just briefly, to rejoice in Father Flanagan’s elevation to the venerable title.

“So we’re now in the position of trying to get our minds around all that,” Morse said, “because it’s a wondrous thing. It’s a thing that needs to be pondered a little, but we think it’s a great stepping off point for us.”

Ballymoe, Ireland COURTESY OF BOYS TOWN

The Father Flanagan League will continue to try to connect with others who are inspired by Father Flanagan, encouraging them to join in prayers and activities.

In Omaha, a prayer group meets every Tuesday after 11:40 a.m. Mass at Father Flanagan’s tomb, located at Boys Town’s Dowd Memorial Chapel of the Immaculate Conception.

The league would like to be notified of any special graces or favors received through Father Flanagan’s intercession. Miracles will be needed for the next steps in the sainthood process: beatification and canonization.

And that will require prayer.

“We have to keep our foot on the prayer pedal,” Wolf said. “We need more prayer in the world, so we’ll just keep doing that.”

COURTESY OF BOYS TOWN

The Church has rigorous standards for the types of miracles needed for beatification and canonization, miracles deemed beyond scientific explanation and only possible through God. They are often medical in nature.

More than 30 cases of important favors and graces received have been reported to the league with some being evaluated for further study. The league often hears of transformations involving someone who has been on the wrong path and returns to the right course, Morse said.

“That’s something we hear quite a lot when we talk with alumni from the Boys Town program,” he said. “Many of them have commented to the league … that our whole life is a miracle, because of the intervention, the change of heart, that comes from encountering love, from encountering beauty, from encountering truth.”

COURTESY OF BOYS TOWN

The league’s role in promoting Father Flanagan’s sainthood cause is part of its larger ambitions.

Its stated vision is to “celebrate the day when the Catholic Church canonizes Monsignor Edward J. Flanagan in recognition of his place with Jesus Christ among the Lord’s communion of saints.”

But the organization’s mission is “to educate and inform all people of the heroic virtue and sanctity of Father Flanagan’s life and his mission as mentor and protector of youth, and spread devotion of his example throughout the world.”

“That’s a mission that won’t end,” Wolf said. “The world needs his example every day.”

Raising awareness about Father Flanagan builds up the Church and is part of the New Evangelization, Morse said.

“By sharing the message of Father Flanagan’s devotion and heroic life, we hope it inspires others to follow him as he followed our Lord.”

“The more we have examples of people doing that in our lives and in the forefront of our minds, the more likely we are to conform to their patterns, habits and practices, and thereby also follow our Lord more closely.”

The league’s work was long supported by Archbishop George J. Lucas, who officially opened Father Flanagan’s sainthood cause in 2012. That support continues with his successor, Archbishop Michael G. McGovern.

The prayers and support from the people across the archdiocese and around the world have been crucial, Wolf said.

“We’re just grateful.”