page_title: Hugh O'Flaherty
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Hugh O'Flaherty / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial to Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty located in Killarney, Ireland.
context_page_description: Hugh O'Flaherty CBE, was an Irish Catholic priest and senior official of the Roman Curia, and significant figure in Catholic resistance to Nazism. During World War II, the monsignor was responsible for saving 6,500 Allied soldiers and Jews. His ability to evade the traps set by the German Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst, earned O'Flaherty the nickname "The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican".
context_section_description: In the early years of World War II, the Very Rev. Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty (as he was then) toured prisoner of war (POW) camps in Italy and tried to find out about prisoners who had been reported missing in action. If he found them alive, he tried to reassure their families through Radio Vatican.
  When Mussolini was removed from power by the King in 1943, thousands of Allied POWs were released; however, when Germany imposed an occupation over Italy, they were in danger of recapture. Some of them, remembering visits by O'Flaherty, reached Rome and asked him for help. Others went to the Irish embassy to the Holy See, the only English-speaking embassy to remain open in Rome during the war. Delia Murphy, who was the wife of Dr Thomas J. Kiernan, the Irish ambassador (and, in her day, a well-known ballad singer), was one of those who helped O'Flaherty.
  Monsignor O'Flaherty did not wait for permission from his superiors. He recruited the help of other priests (including two young New Zealanders, Fathers Owen Snedden and John Flanagan), two agents working for the Free French, François de Vial and Yves Debroise, Communists and a Swiss count. One of his aides was British Major Sam Derry, a POW escapee. Derry along with British officers and escaped POWs Lieutenants Furman and Simpson, and Captain Byrnes, a Canadian, were responsible for the security and operational organisation. O'Flaherty also kept contact with Sir D'Arcy Osborne, British Ambassador to the Holy See, and his butler John May (whom O'Flaherty described as "a genius ... the most magnificent scrounger"). O'Flaherty and his allies concealed 4,000 escapees, mainly Allied soldiers and Jews, in flats, farms and convents. One of the first hideouts was beside the local SS headquarters. O'Flaherty and Derry coordinated all this from his room at the Collegio Teutonico. When outside the Vatican, O'Flaherty wore various disguises. The German occupiers 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 learned his identity, but 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 St. Peter's Basilica.
  Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler, the head of the SS Sicherheitsdienst and Gestapo in Rome, learned of O'Flaherty's actions; he ordered a white line painted on the pavement at the opening of St. Peter's Square (signifying the border between Vatican City and Italy), stating that the priest would be killed if he crossed it. Ludwig Koch, head of the Fascist police in Rome, often spoke of his intention to torture O'Flaherty before executing him if he ever fell into his hands.
  Several others, including priests, nuns and lay people, worked in secret with O'Flaherty, and even hid refugees in their own private homes around Rome. Among these were the Augustinian Maltese Fathers Egidio Galea, Aurelio Borg and Ugolino Gatt, the Dutch Augustinian Father Anselmus Musters and Brother Robert Pace of the Brothers of Christian Schools. Another person who contributed significantly to this operation was the Malta-born widow Chetta Chevalier who hid some refugees in her house with her children, and escaped detection. Jewish religious services were conducted in the Basilica di San Clemente, which was under Irish diplomatic protection, under a painting of Tobias.
  When the Allies arrived in Rome in June 1944, 6,425 of the escapees were still alive. O'Flaherty demanded that German prisoners be treated properly as well. He took a plane to South Africa to meet Italian POWs and to Jerusalem to visit Jewish refugees. Of the 9,700 Jews in Rome, 1,007 had been shipped to Auschwitz. The rest were hidden, over 5,000 of them by the Church − 300 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.
  At the time of the liberation of Rome, O'Flaherty's and Derry's organisation was caring for 3,925 escapees and 
caption: Memorial to Monsignor O'Flaherty located in Killarney, Ireland.
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