Pray for Ray

Following in the footsteps of the cardinal-archbishop -- and, full disclosure, your narrator -- the former Boston mayor and US ambassador to the Holy See Ray Flynn appeared at the famous Bad Abbott's Theology on Tap in Quincy last night... where he collapsed mid-talk:

“He was talking about being the last guy cut from the Boston Celtics by Red Auerbach,” [son Ed] Flynn said, standing outside the hospital’s emergency room last night. “Even though you don’t succeed at one event in your life, you need to move on and work harder and (be) more determined. He didn’t get to finish the story . . . He got weak and he fainted.”...

Flynn served as state representative for South Boston in the late 1970s and then as Boston mayor from 1984 to 1993. He was appointed U.S. ambassador to the Vatican by President Clinton and was frequently called as a guest on national news programs during the height of the clergy sex abuse crisis.

Flynn’s brother Dennis Flynn, a firefighter, died of a heart attack late last month, and family friends say the former mayor had been hit hard by his sibling’s death.

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