A bench and sculpture celebrating the lives of two of Ireland’s leading humanitarians, brothers Fr Aengus and Fr Jack Finucane, were unveiled in Limerick city on Thursday.

The brothers Finucane, both Spiritan priests, first came to worldwide attention in the late 1960s when they shipped thousands of tons of food to starving Biafrans in west Africa during a war with Nigerian authorities.

Fr Aengus and Fr Jack organised mercy-flights aid effort in Biafra.

The airstrip they used was under constant attack from Nigerian bombers, especially when the aid aircraft were taking off and landing.

The Biafran war was the first involving mass starvation to be reported on television and the Nigerian blockade provoked worldwide outrage. In 1970 Fr Jack was briefly imprisoned by the Nigerian authorities before being expelled.

Their Biafra aid campaign led to the founding of Concern Worldwide in 1968. Subsequently, both men were involved with relief efforts in Bangladesh in the 1970s, Ethiopia in the 1980s, Rwanda in the 1990s, Sudan and the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.