By Greg O’Brien
Special to the BIR

Cora Bridget Flood is one of the Pope’s Children.
Born in Graignamanagh in County Kilkenny—not far from the River Barrow, navigable south to St. Mullins where it joins the tidal waters linking with the Nore River and Inistioge with access to New Ross and the open sea—Flood, now 40, is the oldest of six siblings born in this community of farmers and stone masons along the southeast coast. She never met an American until she was a young adult. And yet she was on the leading edge of what the Irish author and economist David McWilliams calls a celebrated movement in his acclaimed book, “The Pope’s Children: The Irish Economic Triumph and the Rise of Ireland's New Elite.”
Published in 2005, the book details the impact of the Celtic Tiger and ensuing property boom on the Republic of Ireland, “resulting in the rise of a new bourgeoisie,” the first generation in Ireland since the mid-19th century Great Famine to increase in population.
“Named for the ironic coincidence of the Irish baby boom of the 1970s, which peaked nine months to the day after Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Dublin, “The Pope’s Children” is a celebration of the first generation of the Celtic Tiger, the beneficiaries of the economic miracle that propelled Ireland from centuries of deprivation into a nation that now enjoys one of the highest living standards in the world,” Amazon.com crowed in an online review.
But that was then. The recent European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout of Irish banks and the worsening state of Irish debt have tamed the tiger, more suitable now for a petting zoo, and have raised questions anew about the economic independence of the island nation whose cultural, political, and artistic influences are embraced, and in some places emulated, around the world.
Sound the clarion call with faithful defenders like Flood of the Irish Pastoral Centre in Quincy and recipient two months ago of the Boston Charitable Irish Society’s Silver Key Award for her “extraordinary service to the most vulnerable members of the Irish community.” About 3,000 miles from Kilkenny or about 4,980 kilometers as the black crow flies, Flood, like other of the “Pope’s Children,” is sanguine about the future of her homeland and focused on lifting the Irish spirit. “I wouldn’t be depressed about it,” she says, “I’d be more practical. I firmly believe that Ireland is strong enough to sustain itself.”
All boats indeed rise with the tide from the North Sea to Boston Harbor, and Flood, who came to Boston 16 years ago and today coordinates the Pastoral Centre’s senior citizen outreach programs, is intent on plying the distinguished currents of Irish history, humor, and culture. “We’re in the business of reconnecting, of sustaining the pride of being Irish,” she says of her job, overseeing more than 400 senior outreaches a month, in a “parish without boundaries,” as the Pastoral Centre notes on its website.
“We are all about creating possibilities for older people from Ireland, as well as people with an interest in Ireland, to get together either in person or on the phone so they can beat the loneliness and sometimes depression that comes with losing spouses and loved ones to illness and old age,” she said in accepting the Silver Key Award, stating that her Kilkenny primary school teachers, “the terrifying Sr. Teresita and Sr. Scholastica, would be smiling if they could see me now.”
It always helps, she observed, “ to have a sense of humor, an upbeat attitude, a store of sarcasm, and an ability to be a good listener to make a difference in individuals lives.”
Flood is fully blessed with such attributes.
“We’re very good at self-promotion,” she says of the Irish spirit in an interview from the Pastoral Centre. “At an early age, we were taught to be proud of our heritage. At least once a day, we were told that we have a remarkable ecclesiastical and literary history, that we’re explorers, saints, and scholars shaped by the sea. My job now is to reinforce this notable identity abroad.”
Flood began her journey in 1994, emigrating to Boston to complete a summer work-study program at the Irish Immigration Center, as part of post-graduate studies in community and youth organizing at the National University of Ireland. She returned to the Immigration Center the following year as a permanent resident beneficiary of the Morrison Visa Program. Her work under esteemed executive director Sister Lena Deevy involved community and volunteer organizing, including building relations with the Montserrat community in Dorchester.
Founded in 1989 to meet the needs of the Irish immigrant population in Massachusetts, the IIC serves Irish newcomers and has expanded to assist immigrants from more than 100 nations—providing legal advice, information, advocacy, referrals, and support for immigrants on issues relating to immigration, employment, citizenship, housing, and social services.
After taking a leave of absence to explore the world on an extended trip to Africa, India, and Australia, Flood returned to center for another four years, to assist with a new initiative, the Walsh Visa Program, as director of Development and Training for the young participants from Northern Ireland.
Word of Flood’s organizational skills spread throughout the Boston area like pink magnolias on Commonwealth Avenue in the springtime.
In 2006 she was named coordinator of the Senior Outreach Program at the Irish Pastoral Centre, a program that seeks to reconnect elderly Irish residents with the social network of the community. Weekly “coffee mornings” in Brighton and Quincy offer senior citizens the opportunity to renew acquaintances, make new friends, and participate in educational and social activities. A monthly Mass and breakfast is held at the Irish Cultural Centre in Canton, and Pastoral Centre house visits are made throughout the Route 128 circuit, as far away as Worcester. “If we can get to a person, we’ll go there,” Flood vows.
Founded in 1987 and funded in part by the Irish government and contributions from Irish and Irish- American communities, the Pastoral Centre serves a range of individuals with programs for toddlers, young mothers, and young adults, as well as seniors, that help to meet immigration, housing, counseling, socialization, and employment needs “in as culturally sensitive manner as possible.”
One might get the impression that Flood was raised in a convent. Hardly. “At an early age, my mother and relatives told me that I should be a nurse and that my younger sister should be a model,” Flood recalls. “I thought there was no way in hell that I’m going to be a nurse, if she’s going to be a model! I didn’t want to fit into that stereotype.”
Years later, at secondary school in New Ross, about 11 miles from Kilkenny, Flood confided with a counselor that she thought social work sounded “sexy.” She reasoned at the time: “It had an inviting title, and involved people doing good and making an impact on the world, although I didn’t know why.”
Flood eventually would discern the connotation, a learning curve set in motion through the fine example of her parents, Paddy and Maura (Doyle), who raised their children in a small village, a service town for the surrounding farming community. “The only people who came to the village where I grew up were folks who worked there or were raised there,” she says. “We didn’t have tourists or foreigners. It was insular, very comfortable, and very old Irish.”
A gifted stonemason, Flood’s father, who left school at age 12 to practice the trade, stressed the importance of education to his children—two of whom now live in Australia, one in England, one in the U.S. and two in Ireland. Her mother, who left school at 15 and stowed away to England, stressed the importance of independence. “Mother also was always encouraging the girls to get an education and not be dependent on the guys to keep us in the manner in which we were accustomed,” Flood says.
Neither parents, now retired in Kilkenny, smoked or drank; they spent all their discretionary resources on their children. Neither were they particularly religious in traditional Catholic ways, “although Dad was a bit more spiritual; perhaps it was his way of torturing us,” Flood says.
Each Sunday, Paddy Flood took his wife and children to his parents’ home in County Carlow at the base of a mountain. “We got to Granny’s house just in time for the rosary at 6 p.m. The minute we got to the door, all six kids and my parents were made to grab sofa cushions, kneel on the floor, and say the rosary. That was the extent of our formal religion. With Dad, I suppose, it was not so much about religious customs or prayers; it was about participating in something he felt was good, worthwhile, and that connected us to one another and to our grandparents.”
Today, Cora Flood’s life at the Pastoral Centre is all about religion in the missionary spirit, and yet she views her spiritual beliefs as a “faith without boundaries. I’m not particularly a Mass-goer, the outward notion of a devout Catholic,” she says. “Faith or belief in something outside myself is important, but actions to me speak louder than all the decades of the rosary and all the Masses one attends. I’m more inclined to say of myself that I’m an Irish person interested in providing opportunities for the people I work with, the people of Ireland to which I have dedicated my life.”
There is little in Flood’s life that is stereotypical. A mother of two children, Orla, 3, and Killian, 1, she lives in Dorchester with her partner of 15 years, Brian Crosse, a Limerick City man who is now an accountant with a downtown Boston financial services firm. “We live between Adams Village and Fields Corner,” she adds, but is quick to note, “I might be considered snobby if I said we lived in Adams Village, so I say the edge of Adams Village and Fields Corner, between the Irish and the Vietnamese.”
So be it. For now, Flood is staying put, but her vita suggests new challenges lie in the future. A self-proclaimed short-term planner, she’s toying with the prospect of a master’s degree one day in intercultural relations, as in “how the Irish interact with people of other cultures.”
Would she circumnavigate the world to assess this interaction? “Brilliant!” she replies with characteristic understatement, in a tone that suggests Cora Bridget Flood has a clear vision for her life and the grace and endurance to pursue it.
Greg O’Brien, a regular Boston Irish Reporter contributor, is president of Stony Brook Group, a Brewster-based publishing and political/communications strategy firm. He is the author/editor of several books, and writes for various regional and national publications.