The title of this book grabs attention as one ponders: “A priest had the power to put Europe back together?” What Sean Brennan offers the reader is a biography of a priest who played a noteworthy role in significant events in Europe from World War II through the Cold War. Brennan is successful in his goal of placing the life of Father Fabian Flynn in historical context. Far from a simple biography, the book is historically dense and thus not a simple read. Within the framework of historical events, Brennan organizes the book chronologically from childhood to death. He uses a wide variety of primary sources, including interviews and a plethora of archival sources.
The first two chapters cover Flynn's youth and his early service with the Passionists. Flynn grew up as an “only child” in a middle-class Irish Catholic family in Boston. Diminutive in stature and educated among upper-class Protestants, Flynn needed to find his niche, and he did, writing for his secondary school paper. Although sources regarding Fabian Flynn were limited in developing these chapters, one gets the sense that as a young man, Flynn had already begun to direct his life's course. Confreres in the Passionist order discovered Flynn's writing ability and invited him to participate in the Catholic newsmagazine, The Sign, which required him to transfer to the monastery where it was published.
Flynn was recovering from stomach cancer when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Ordained about ten years prior, Flynn requested to enlist as a military chaplain. Chapter 3 covers this period. In 1943, he became chaplain for the “Blue Spaders,” the 26th Infantry Regiment. He was the spiritual guide for these men who fought in northern Africa and Europe. They landed on Omaha Beach later in the day on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and Flynn was with them. When the war ended, the Blue Spaders and Flynn were part of the American occupation force in Bavaria. Flynn supervised religious services in DP (displaced persons) and POW camps around Nuremberg. When the International Military Tribunal (IMT) began in 1945, the Blue Spaders served as guards and Flynn as the official IMT Catholic chaplain.
Following the IMT, Flynn directed Catholic Relief Service (CRS) programs in Germany, Hungary, and Austria. Thus, as the Cold War emerged, Flynn was there to support Catholic Church efforts to maintain Catholicism amid communism. In chapters 4 and 5, the reader sees Father Fabian Flynn spending most of his time in Europe helping refugees in a variety of ways. Flynn continued to write for The Sign. As he experienced the aftermath of war and talked with individuals, he found stories to share—struggles of refugees and a woman who saved Jews from the Nazis and continued to serve them in DP camps. Flynn saw communism as a great enemy of Christianity and witnessed its spread throughout Eastern Europe. Could the Catholic Church survive there? After the Soviets arrested Cardinal József Mindszenty in Hungary in 1948, Flynn wrote about the cardinal's show trial. Flynn continued to work with the CRS on behalf of the refugees in Europe. He travelled throughout eastern and central Europe fundraising for the CRS. He also continued to have health problems with kidney pain and bouts of malaria.
In 1956, with the permission of Hungary's communist government, Flynn returned to Hungary to resume his charitable work for the CRS. He arrived just as the revolution began. When Flynn, along with the CRS and others, tried to take medicine into Hungary during the three-week uprising, Soviet soldiers forced them back into Austria. Flynn wrote several articles to bring attention to the plight of Hungarian refugees. Flynn returned to America to travel the country raising funds for the Hungarian refugees and then settled back in his home office in Vienna. The efforts of Flynn and the CRS helped many Hungarian refugees start a new life in the democratic West. Flynn spent the last years of his life in New York, but he continued to bring attention to struggles around the world through his writing—Vietnam, Eastern Europe, Haiti, Africa, etc.
Biographies generally do not have a staunch thesis. What Sean Brennan does in this book is show the reader how the significant actions of Father Fabian Flynn influenced the lives of many people during difficult times. Some reviewers might note that Brennan loses the thread of Flynn's life story by incorporating so much background history. I appreciate the historical background and use my imagination to keep Flynn in the narrative. This is a well-researched book simply dense with background information. Brennan points out that although Flynn was “conservative in his religious, social, political, and economic views,” his beliefs “were also tempered by realism” (38). This, perhaps, served him well as he ministered to fighting and dying soldiers for two years, as he wrote about the weaknesses of governments and leaders, and as he tried to help refugees throughout the world. His “realism” served him well as he “remained at the center of the major events in history” (254). In Brennan's book, the reader sees much of the twentieth century's moral struggles through the eyes of one caring man.
