Archbishop Flynn remembered as community builder at funeral
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Former Archbishop Harry Flynn, who led the Twin Cities archdiocese from 1995 to 2008, was remembered Monday for his hospitality and generosity, complete with handwritten Christmas cards and “wicked” blueberry pies.
"He had this beautiful capacity for hospitality and friendship, capacity that created a real sense of community,” said William Lori, the archbishop of Baltimore who studied under Flynn many years ago at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland.
“When we seminarians were in a kerfuffle about some problem or controversy, he [calmed] the waters and helped us distinguish between what's important and what's not,” Lori said in the homily at Flynn’s funeral mass held at the Cathedral of St. Paul.
Hundreds of parishioners and clergy from across the country gathered to listen to remembrances, pray, sing and take communion. After the ceremony, Flynn’s casket was carried down the cathedral’s steps to a waiting hearse, as dozens of priests dressed in white robes sang a closing chant.
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Bill Nolan, who works at a parish in Minneapolis, said Flynn visited the high school where Nolan taught many years ago.
“He was just a presence. He didn’t come in with a lot of pomp and circumstance or a lot of glitz. He would just come in and talk to people,” Nolan said, adding that he hopes people remember Flynn as a “humble priest who wanted people to know and love Jesus” rather than for his administrative legacy, which was covered in the news.
Flynn led the Catholic Church’s initial national response to the growing clergy sexual abuse crisis and was among the church leaders who helped write the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in the early 2000s. He was later criticized by some sex abuse victims for his handling of the problems.
But Flynn earned headlines on other issues, too. He teamed up with other faith leaders to work on issues including poverty, minimum wage and climate change.
Mary Ann Hecht, who also attended Flynn’s funeral, was a staffer at the Minnesota State Capitol in 2007 when Flynn and other clergy were participating in a presentation on climate change. Later that year, the Legislature passed the state’s landmark Next Generation Energy Act.
“He was so good about talking about the importance of the world we live in and that notion of stewardship. He was soft-spoken but rather eloquent about that,” Hecht said, noting this was long before Pope Francis released his famous encyclical on the subject.
Andrea Lee, a close friend who delivered one of the remembrances during the service, said Flynn loved spending time with his dogs at his home on Schroon Lake in New York, including this past summer.
“He showed love through prayer and showing up. By his holy hospitality and wicked blueberry pies. He showed it with his flip phone every day and with his prodigious memory for name and the details of people's lives,” she said.