EYE SURGEON AND CHAPLAIN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 1 June 1943, Page 5

EYE SURGEON AND CHAPLAIN

PADRE’S DUAL FUNCTION WORK OF FATHER FLYNN (Rec. 10.25 a.m.) Sydney, This Day. The dual functions of military chaplain and eye surgeon are carried out by a Roman Catholic padre in the Darwin area. He is Father Frank Flynn, brilliant Sydney ophthalmic surgeon, who in 1936 gave up his MacQuarie Street practice to join the Sacred Heart missionaries. He was ordained priest last year. Father Flynn was one of the Australian army’s three ophthalmologists who have largely defeated endemic eye disease which formerly cost the Commonwealth forces thousands of man hours on the vital supply route linking Southern Australia with the Northern Territory.

The army authorities early became concerned at the number of truck drivers who reported sick with eye troubles on the long desert road link. Preventive treatments designed by specialists however reduced the incidence by 50 per cent. Father Flynn is one of six brothers, all of whom are doctors, and five of whom are serving with the armed forces.

An Australian war corresponderit remarks that “when Father Flyn;* retired from medicine a joking colleague said he was doing so ‘because he could preach better than he could practice.' To-day, however, he is giving medical as well as spiritual assistance to hundreds of servicemen in the Darwin area.”—P.A. Special Australian Correspondent.