February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
For Flynn, former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, the moment will stay with him for the rest of his days.
“I was in St. Peter’s Square and people all around were saying the rosary when the news came,” Flynn said this week from Rome.
The former Boston mayor said that it was the pope’s brand of Catholic social justice, rather than Democratic or Republican political ideology, that had the biggest influence on his own political positions.
“I first met John Paul in a Polish church hall in Boston in 1969. We became friends that day and remained friends down through the years. This is a very personal emotional time for me,” Flynn said of the pope’s passing.
Meanwhile, in a message to Hibernians around the U.S., AOH national president Ned McGinley called for prayers for the late pope.
“There was no greater inspiration than joining with him in prayer,” McGinley said. “His moral leadership and humble poise encouraged many and his relationship with young people was unrivaled.”
CHARGE PEOPLE, SAYS IAUC
The Irish American Unity Conference wants to see justice done in the case of the murder of Belfast man Robert McCartney.
But the lobby group doesn’t want the investigation to stand in the way of a return to devolved government.
“We want to see arrests and we want to see people going to court. But you don’t deny people a government because of the committing of a crime,” said IAUC national president Andy Somers.
The McCartney case had become “a British smokescreen,” Somers, a retired judge, said. “This is another issue that the British have the Irish fighting over.”
CLINTON FOR IRELAND
His own health permitting, former President Bill Clinton is expected to visit Ireland in late May as part of a campaign to highlight mental health issues in the Republic.
Clinton will attend a gala dinner in Dublin on May 23 in support of a campaign that is in large part aimed at tackling the soaring suicide rate in Ireland.
The Sunday Independent reported that Clinton might also devote time during his visit to aid the slumping Northern Ireland peace process in the aftermath of the British general election, which is being held May 5.
MCGREEVEY MAKES NEWS AGAIN
He turned the summer silly news season on its head when he quit the New Jersey governorship while announcing that he was a “gay American.”
Now Jim McGreevey is back in the headlines for landing the Newark Star Ledger with a Pulitzer Prize for deadline reporting.
The Star Ledger’s editor, Jim Willse, is a former editor of the Daily News in New York and is Irish American with family roots in Roscommon.
At the start of his newspaper career, Willse applied unsuccessfully for a reporting job with the Irish Times in Dublin.