When he took the job as the United States' man in the Vatican, Raymond L. Flynn promised he wouldn't be another quiet, stuffed-shirt bureaucrat interested only in state dinners and a diplomatic pension.
Mission accomplished.The man who made a name for himself as a three-term mayor of Boston until 1993 has kept a high profile since becoming the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. With President Clinton's backing, Flynn has transformed the office of the Vatican ambassadorship.
"The reason why I was chosen for this position, and also the reason for the expanded role, is that I've spent my whole life fighting for the poor and needy in America's cities," Flynn said in an interview while in Boston recently.
During his tenure at the Vatican, Flynn has traveled the globe speaking on the plight of the homeless and hungry and organizing relief efforts. He won kudos for helping in negotiations to release two Americans held in Iraq last July, and for pushing Vatican-Israeli ties two years ago.
The past 21/2 years also have been marked by political sniping, scoldings from superiors, an over-before-it-started campaign for governor, family adversity and a campaign scandal back home.
Through it all, he has not given anyone reason to forget that he is a political appointee, not a career diplomat.
"That is a job that has rarely brought any attention whatsoever to anyone who held it, for good or ill," said Lou DiNatale, a political analyst at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. "Flynn is not like that, and Flynn hasn't allowed it to become that."
The latest feathers to be ruffled by the 56-year-old Flynn belong to the State Department's inspector general and conservative Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.
Helms, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, complained about remarks Flynn made in a letter to 1,000 religious leaders last April calling congressional budget cuts "mean-spirited . . . immoral and wrong." Flynn also wrote that the presidential election in 1992 "reflected a new national consensus dedicated to turning around that insensitive policy."
The State Department's inspector general recommended that the department reprimand Flynn for not clearing his remarks first.
"This isn't some personality clash as much as it is a philosophical difference on the appropriate role of government of helping the poor and working families, in my opinion," Flynn said.
Ever since his name cropped up for the Vatican post, Flynn's road has been as bumpy as some Boston streets.