133. Eleanor Flynn - 24 September 2023

Australian Women Preach

Twenty-fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time - Matthew 20: 1-16a Honorary Associate Professor Eleanor Flynn is a medical graduate who retired in 2019 from the University of Melbourne Medical School where she was involved in student selection and developing and implementing curricula for palliative care, clinical communications and professional behaviour. Until 2017 she also worked as a Palliative Care specialist in both hospital and community settings.

She is a founding member of Women’s Wisdom in the Church (WWITCH) and currently Co-Chair of the Australasian Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (ACCCR). She is a member of All Saints Fitzroy Parish Advisory group and Safeguarding Committee. She is also involved in Spirit Unbounded’s activities to parallel the Synod on Synodality in Rome this October.

She is the deputy Chair of the Spiritual Health Association and the secretary of the Abbeyfield North Melbourne house committee. Her theological studies include a B Theol and an M Theol considering the images in the office of the dead in late Medieval books of hours. She has published on clinical and philosophical aspects of care of the dying, selection of medical students, professionalism in medical schools, communications skills teaching, supporting staff who support students, the medieval view of death, the education of chaplains in COVID-19, and faith based funerals in Covid. She currently co-teaches a course on earth and bereavement through art and spirituality at the University of Divinity. She is involved in a research project about families providing spiritual care to people with dementia.