CHAPLAIN AND SURGEON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25241, 2 June 1943, Page 3

CHAPLAIN AND SURGEON

AUSTRALIAN’S DUAL ROLE , (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent) .SYDNEY, June 1. The dual functions of a military chaplain and an eye surgeon are carried out by a Roman Catholic padre in the Darwin' area. He is Father Frank Flynn, a brilliant Sydney ophthalmic surgeon, who in 1936 gave up his Macquarrie street practice to join the Sacred Heart missionaries. He was ordained a priest last year. Father Flynn is one of the Australian Army’s three ophthalmologists who have largely defeated the 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 the specialists, however, reduced the incidence of the disease 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 correspondent remarks that “ when Father Flynn retired from medicine a joking colleague said he was doing so ‘ because he could preach better than he cpuld practise.’ To-day, however, he is giving medical as well as spiritual assistance to hundreds of servicemen in the Darwin afea.”