An appreciation for a humble Irish priest
Posted: Monday, October 12, 2009 2:11 PM
By Mike Taibbi, NBC News Correspondent
Aengus Finucane, April 26, 1932 - October 6, 2009
It’s been a season of notable deaths – Cronkite, Kennedy, Swayze, Jackson, Fawcett, Hughes, Hewitt, Novak, and other so-called bold faced names. But there’s a great man who died at age 77 in a Dublin hospice last Tuesday, Oct.6 and if Americans knew this Catholic priest who loved their country as well as his Irish homeland, their hearts would be as burdened by grief as are the hearts of thousands around the world.
His name was Aengus Finucane, and for nearly 50 years he roamed the world with a single purpose: to live among and lift up "the poorest of the poor," is the descriptive he always used, so they might have at least a chance at the life and prospects seemingly denied them by war, famine or sudden disaster.
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| Courtesy of Concern Worldwide |
| Father Aengus Finucane with former President of Ireland, Dr. Mary Robinson. |
He had the full tool kit for that kind of work: a missionary’s zeal fueled at times by righteous anger and sometimes by that peculiarly Irish stubbornness; humor and the right kind of humility, as well as enormous charm and personal charisma; and a wonk’s need to know how the often arcane details of assistance programs could be manipulated to serve very simple human needs – food, water, health services, shelter. As a young man he looked like a movie star yet moved naturally among desperate populations who seemed to quickly see him as someone who understood their lives and challenges and who could find the best route to the nearest solution.
I met Aengus in his role as honorary President of Concern USA, the American affiliate of Concern’s Dublin-based worldwide organization. When he stepped down as Concern’s Chief Executive he turned his attention to the U.S. operation, headed by Siobhan Walsh, my wife.
It was my good fortune to have spent a good deal of time with Aengus over the past 13 years, in New York and in Ireland, and to have come to know him as a person and not just the titular head of an aid organization. So I know he liked a good joke and good whiskey, Peking Duck and the latest popular movie, and hours of conversation on any subject that triggered his vigorous curiosity.
But here’s the thing: though this was the humble priest you’d drop off at the residence of the Holy Ghost fathers at the end of an evening, and though he wasn’t the kind of man who reveled in the stories of his work, you were never unaware of what that work was and how that work distinguished him from almost anyone else you were ever likely to meet.
As a missionary priest in the breakaway republic of Biafra, during the famine of civil-war torn Nigeria in the 1960s, Aengus did whatever he could to bring aid to the neediest caught in the middle of the war . He organized brigades of helpers who raised oil lamps in the middle of the night to form a makeshift airplane runway, so hundreds of aircraft could bring in food and then fly out with the sickest children in the most desperate need of medical care – while Aengus and his team dodged artillery fire from the Nigerian army.
His brother Jack, back in Ireland, cobbled together a food collection network that eventually provided nourishment to 4 million Biafrans daily, despite the Nigerian government’s attempt at a food blockade. It was the first African famine to receive worldwide television coverage. But few outside of Ireland knew of the young priest who with his brave colleagues risked everything in a faraway place, night after night and day after day, to keep the famine and the war around it from claiming even more victims.
Aengus soon helped form the relief organization that came to be known as Concern, and began traveling to the far corners of the world in the greatest need. To Bangladesh, where he worked alongside Mother Teresa when floods and famine threatened whole populations; to Pakistan and Cambodia, Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda just after the genocide; and later to Honduras and Haiti – wherever war or disaster threatened to flatten the most vulnerable and defenseless among us.
A lot of the work was the kind of drudge work news organizations rarely cover except in broad strokes during calamitous events. The work of digging wells, delivering seed to reclaim farmland, grading roadways; getting schools and clinics up and running; providing food, water, medications, shelter kits; fashioning rudimentary sewage treatment systems; teaching AIDs patients how to reclaim their self-respect; pioneering micro-finance programs and food production innovations so that threatened populations could eventually save and sustain themselves. Essentially the long list of projects referred to as "capacity building" in the lexicon of the aid community. The primary goal wherever Aengus touched down was to make outside assistance unnecessary as quickly as possible.
But when Aengus would say, "Mike, will we go out for dinner one night this week?" I knew none of his history would come up unless I brought it up. Instead we might all talk about the latest world crisis, or about whatever scandal seemed to be dominating news coverage at the moment. He liked a good yarn, about any subject, and was a captivating raconteur himself. He was just good company, this world traveler who never seemed to be world weary or infected by cynicism, and I was lucky to be among the many he counted as friends.
On my end, though, he was someone I knew to be more than a friend. To be honest, how many "friends" does anyone have who in the course of their careers saved not hundreds of lives, but hundreds of thousands of lives – maybe even millions of lives. Human lives that might have been cut short, if not for the efforts of my "friend," who I was lucky enough to have sitting across from me, savoring another bite of duck breast with hoisin sauce.
He was the real deal, a hero priest who for a half century of his journey on this planet spent each day working so that others less fortunate than he could make it to the next day and the days beyond that.
I mourn his loss and will miss him, and though he wasn’t a "bold faced name" in the way of our celebrity-obsessed society, the world will be the poorer for his having left us.
Related links:
Concernusa.org
Concern Worldwide mourns founder Aengus Finucane
