Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel of Rome’
BORN on February 28, 1898 in the townland of Lisrobin between Boherbue and Kiskeam, Hugh O’Flaherty was raised in Kerry after his father took a job as a steward at Killarney Golf Club.
After finishing school he joined the priesthood, studying in Limerick and Rome before being ordained in 1925. Fluent in several languages, he became served as a Vatican diplomat in various countries, returning to Rome in 1934 to become a papal chamberlain and Monsignor.
Still stationed in Rome at the outbreak of World War II he was approached by an escaping Allied POW for help. Using his extensive network of contacts, he organised a network of accomplices including foreign diplomats, communist activists, Free French agents and a Swiss Count to spirit those on the run from the Nazis out of the city. These include downed Allied airmen, escaping prisoners and Jews.
While safe in the neutral Vatican, O’Flaherty came to the attention of the notorious SS Obersturmbannführer in Rome Herbert Kappler, who made it a personal obsession to kill of capture the elusive Monsignor and ordered him shot on sight should he set foot outside the Vatican.
Aware of the danger he was under, O’Flaherty continued his life-saving work, often going out in different disguises and earning himself the name ‘ The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican’.
It is estimated that by the end of the war he and his clandestine network help save the lives of more than 6,000 people.
O’Flaherty subsequently became a passionate advocate for German prisoners rights, even visiting his former foe Kappler in jail, and was honoured by the British and the Americans for his wartime actions.
After suffering a stroke in 1960 he retired to Kerry and passed away three years later.
A campaign, led by Holocaust survivor Tomi Reichental, is lobbying to have Hugh O’Flaherty recognised by Yad Vashem, Israel’s World Holocaust Remembrance Centre as being ‘Righteous Among the Nations’.