Purists in the party because, like Brian O'Higgins and Mary MacSwiney had long resented O'Flanagan, and they dismissed him because he took part in a radio re-enactment of the opening of the First Dáil."Because of his participation in a Radio Athlone broadcast enactment of the meeting of January 21, 1919, of the First Dáil in the Round Room of the Mansion House, Father O'Flanagan was expelled from Sinn Féin. He had joined Sean T. O'Kelly, Senator E. J. Duggan, Robert C. Barton and Piarais Breaslaí in a reconstruction. The Sinn Féin journal An Dé, declared that his participation automatically ended his connection." "In a spirited reply the priest declared "something more than an order from the Standing Committee of Sinn Féin would be required to prevent me repeating publicly before the people of Ireland the part the part I took on January 21, 1919." A last minute meeting of Sinn Féin had forbidden attendance, but the letter had not reached Father O'Flanagan." On 3 April 1939, after much lobbying by his friends and supporters, O'Flanagan was restored to his full clerical faculties by the Bishop of Elphin, Dr. Edward Doorly. In retirement he lived in Sandyford, Dublin, and acted as chaplain at the Carmelite Convents in Kilmacud and Roebuck, and the Convalescent Home of the Sisters of Charity in Kilternan. Asked about his beliefs in later years, he replied: "I've been thinking recently where the Catholic Church has failed. It seems to me we have omitted the whole of Christ's teaching. We are introduced to Christ as a babe, absolutely overshadowed by His mother. Then you hear almost nothing about Him until His death. If I were to write a biography of a mere man, his birth and then his death, what kind of biography would that be—nothing about the object of his life?" After a short illness in the nursing home at 7 Mount Street Crescent, Dublin, O'Flanagan died of stomach cancer on at 4.30 pm on Friday 7 August 1942, within a few days of his sixty-sixth birthday. His last letter was to Bernie Conway of Cliffoney, dated 2 August 1942: "Dear Bernie, Good bye to you and to dear dear Cliffoney. I am dying with a very special love of the people in my inmost heart.