Dublin, Ireland, Oct 29, 2025 /
13:51 pm
The Irish postal service has released a new postage stamp marking the 100th anniversary of the ordination of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, savior of 6,500 Jews in Rome during World War II.
O’Flaherty used his position in the Roman Curia to hide fugitives from Nazi forces for the duration of their occupation of Rome from September 1943 to June 1944. It is estimated that he saved 6,500 Jews by hiding them in monasteries, convents, Vatican living quarters, and even Castel Gandolfo before smuggling them to safety.
Every evening, he stood in defiance of the Nazis, taking up his position in the half shadows on the steps at St. Peter’s. The German occupiers, unable to cross into neutral Vatican soil, could only watch in frustration and anger as O’Flaherty audaciously and courageously greeted a succession of fugitives.
To the Germans, O’Flaherty was elusive, enigmatic, and provocative, becoming the most wanted man in the Eternal City. He used disguise and subterfuge to move outside the Vatican at night, visiting those he helped. He was never apprehended.
Col. Herbert Kappler, the SS commander in Rome, mounted several unsuccessful attempts to abduct and murder O’Flaherty. Once, a Gestapo hit squad was reportedly apprehended in St. Peter’s Basilica by a team of four Swiss guards who, together with some Yugoslavian refugees, put manners on the Germans before ejecting them, disheveled and bruised, from Vatican territory.
Postwar, Kappler was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Ardeatine Massacre. O’Flaherty was his only visitor in the Gaeta prison outside Rome, calling every month. O’Flaherty baptized Kappler into the Catholic faith in 1959.
Gregory Peck stars as Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty in the 1983 movie “The Scarlet and the Black,” with Christopher Plummer featured as Kappler.
The Irish priest’s network was established without his ecclesiastical superiors’ permission, though Pope Pius XII eventually became aware that something was happening within the Vatican walls.
He earned the nickname “The Pimpernel of the Vatican” after the fictional character the Scarlet Pimpernel, a daring English aristocrat who rescued French nobles from the guillotine during the French Revolution using disguises and daring rescues.
O’Flaherty was born in County Cork, Ireland, and his family moved to Killarney, where his father was steward of Killarney Golf Club. There, the young O’Flaherty was a scratch handicap golfer. Following ordination in Rome in 1925, he served in Egypt, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Czechoslovakia as a Vatican diplomat before returning to Rome and a position in the Holy Office.
The “Dictionary of Irish Biography” says of O’Flaherty: “Despite his rough-edged demeanor, his skills at bridge and golf admitted him to the highest echelons of Roman society … After serving as secretary to the papal nuncio to Allied prisoner-of-war camps in northern Italy, O’Flaherty began to assist Jews, dissidents, deserting Italian soldiers, and others fleeing from the Italian fascist government.”
Patrick J Passmore lives on the north coast of Ireland. He has worked with St Brigid Media on a range of projects as a consultant and writer.
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