Kathy and I spent a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon walking around the historic streets of the South End neighborhood of Boston before attending the 4:30 Mass at the beautifully renovated Cathedral of the Holy Cross. As we were entering the church, a longtime parishioner whom I recognized said to me, “Mayor, the Cathedral looks great, doesn’t it?” “It sure does,” I replied. “You and your family and wife’s family have a long history of attending church services here,” he said.
We were early for Mass so we had a chance to talk for a while. He knew the story of how so many immigrant Irish men and women worked for the old wealthy Yankee families as domestics and laborers in the Back Bay and South End when they first came to the United States, including our own parents and grandparents. But on our beautiful afternoon in the South End, attending Mass at the Cathedral and talking with the pastor, Monsignor Kevin O’Leary, I thought back to just a day before, in which I attended a political event for State Rep. David Biele at Amrhein’s Restaurant in South Boston. There I talked to a man I greatly admire, John McGann, who oversees one of the most respected alcohol and drug recovery programs for men and women in the Greater Boston community. He knew of my longtime friendship with the Gavin House founder Jimmy Sweeney. Jim and I were teammates on the Tech Tourney Championship Southie High School basketball team in 1956. Jim, like John McGann, went on to do great things to help so many courageous people in the recovery community.
But the story I told him is one that I was most moved by in life — the funeral of Paul Sullivan, the founder of the Pine Street Inn. I had volunteered at the Pine Street Inn in Chinatown and now in the South End as a Suffolk County Superior Court Probation Officer. Paul Sullivan’s funeral Mass was held at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where I sat on Saturday thinking about all the historic and sad events that I have attended over the many years, from visits by Pope John Paul II to attending quiet funerals for unknown poor street people. But as I told John McGann the other day, that years back, while attending the filled-to-capacity Cathedral funeral for Paul Sullivan, just before Mass started, I left my pew and stood outside the church on Washington Street to be with several hundred men and women who at one time in their life, needed help and got it thanks to the Pine Street Inn. The funeral Mass was heard on a loudspeaker to all standing outside and saying a prayer for the life and soul of Paul Sullivan.
It was one of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching scenes I have ever witnessed. I saw so many heroic people in recovery and even people looking desperately to God and a halfway house recovery program for help. Sitting in the Cathedral listening to Monsignor Kevin O’Leary, the music and the many diverse worshipers, many of whom were from the Cathedral Housing Development, Villa Victoria Housing and throughout the area, really made me feel proud of our incredible Boston history, heritage and faith.
Raymond L. Flynn is a former mayor of Boston and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.