Hugh O'Flaherty
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Msgr. Hugh O'Flaherty, CBE (28 February 1898 – 30 October 1963) was an Irish Catholic priest who saved about 4,000 Allied soldiers and Jews in the Vatican during World War II. He earned the nickname "the Pimpernel of the Vatican". (Click here for photograph.)
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[edit] Prior to World War Two
Hugh O'Flaherty was born in Cahirciveen, County Kerry, Ireland and studied theology at the Killarney seminary. He was posted to Rome in 1922 to finish his studies and was ordained on December 20, 1925. He stayed to work for the Holy See.
O'Flaherty served as a Vatican diplomat in Egypt, Haiti, Santo Domingo and Czechoslovakia. In 1934 O'Flaherty received the title of Monsignor. In addition to his priestly duties, he was an amateur golfing champion.
[edit] World War Two
In the early years of World War II, O'Flaherty toured prisoner of war camps in Italy and tried to find out prisoners who had been reported missing in action. If he found them alive, he tried to reassure their families through Vatican Radio.
When Italy changed sides in 1943, thousands of British POWs were released. Some of them, remembering visits of O'Flaherty, reached Rome and asked him for help. Others went to the Irish legation, the only English-speaking one to remain open in Rome during the war. Delia Murphy, who was the wife of the ambassador and in her day a well-known ballad singer, was one of those who helped O'Flaherty.[1]
O'Flaherty did not wait for permission from his superiors. He recruited the help of other priests, two agents working for Free French and even Communists and a Swiss count. One of his aides was British Colonel Sam Derry. He also kept contact with Sir D'Arcy Osborne, British Ambassador to the Vatican. O'Flaherty and his allies concealed 4000 escapees - Allied soldiers and Jews - in flats, farms and convents. One of the hideouts was beside the local SS headquarters. O'Flaherty coordinated all this and when he was visiting outside Vatican, he wore various disguises.
The German occupiers of Rome tried to stop him and eventually they found out that the leader of the network was a priest. SS attempts to assassinate him failed. They found out his identity but they could not arrest him inside the Vatican. When the German ambassador revealed this to O'Flaherty, he began to meet his contacts on the stairs of the St. Peter's Basilica.
Several others, including priests, nuns and lay people, worked in secret with Msgr. O'Flaherty, and even hid refugees in their own private homes around Rome. Among these we find Augustinian Maltese Fathers, Egidio Galea (the last surviving Friar who died on January 3, 2005 aged 86), Aurelio Borg, Ugolino Gatt and Brother Robert. Another person who contributed significantly to this operation was the Malta-born Chetta Chevalier, who hid some refugees in her house with her children[citation needed]. Jewish religious services were conducted in the Basilica di San Clemente under a painting of Tobias. The Basilica was under Irish diplomatic protection.[2]
When the Allies arrived in Rome in June 1944, 3925 of the escapees were still alive. O'Flaherty demanded that German prisoners should be treated properly as well. He took a plane to South Africa to meet Italian POWs and to Jerusalem to visit Jewish refugees. He even visited the imprisoned SS chief of Rome, Colonel Herbert Kappler, in prison - month after month - and in 1959 Kappler converted to Catholicism [3]
Of the 9,700 Jews in Rome, 1,007 were shipped to Auschwitz. The rest were hidden, 5,000 of them by the official Church--3,000 in Castel Gandolfo, 200 or 400 (estimates vary) as "members" of the Palatine Guard and some 1,500 in monasteries, convents and colleges. The remaining 3,700 were hidden in private homes.[4]
[edit] After World War Two
After the war O'Flaherty received a number of awards, including the CBE and the US Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm. He refused to use the lifetime pension Italy gave him. In 1960 he suffered a serious stroke during Mass and was forced to return to Ireland. He moved to Cahirciveen to live with his sister, Mrs. Bride Sheehan.
Hugh O'Flaherty died October 30, 1963, aged 65 at his sister's home. He was buried in the Cemetery of the Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church in Cahirciveen. There is a grove of Hugh O'Flaherty Trees in the Killarney National Park. O'Flaherty was termed one of the "Righteous Among the Nations", and there is a tree planted in his honour in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.
[edit] Dramatisation
O'Flaherty was immortalized by the 1983 television film, The Scarlet and the Black, where he was portrayed by Gregory Peck. The film follows the exploits of O'Flaherty from the German occupation of Rome to the entrance of the Allied Forces. He was also the second principal character in a radio play by Robin Glendinning on Kappler's time seeking asylum in the Vatican, entitled The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, which was first broadcast on Thursday 30 November 2006 on Radio 4.[5]
[edit] Notes
- ^ 2002. Coogan, Tim Pat Wherever Green is Worn page 77. ISBN 0 09 995850
- ^ 2002, Coogan, Tim Pat Wherever Green is Worn page 86 isbn 0 09 995850
- ^ [1] Irish Times, 1 August 2000
- ^ [2] retrieved 9 December 2006
- ^ [3] and [4] retrieved 9 December 2006
[edit] Further reading
- J.P. Gallagher 1968, Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, New York: Coward-McCann
- William C. Simpson 1996, A Vatican Lifeline, Sparedon Press
