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Hugh O'Flaherty had only a standard, modest Irish antipathy towards the Britishuntil he was in seminary; then some of his boyhood friends were killed bythe Black and Tans.
O'Flaherty earned his bachelor's degree in theology in one year at the UrbanCollege of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, and was ordainedin 1925. He served as vice rector of the college for the next two years,while earning doctorates in divinity, canon law and philosophy. After fouryears in the Vatican diplomatic service, he was appointed a notary of theHoly Office.
Although many people found him rough-edged, Msgr. O'Flaherty had a stunningsuccess in Roman social high life; this would prove important during theNazi occupation. He raised some eyebrows by becoming amateur golf championof Italy-- diocesan priests of Rome were not allowed to play golf. CardinalOttaviani, however, liked and defended him.
Monsignor O'Flaherty got his start in smuggling and hiding refugees in thefall of 1942, when the Germans and Italians cracked down on prominent Jewsand aristocratic anti-Fascists. Monsignor O'Flaherty had socialized withthese people before the war; now he hid them in monasteries and convents,and in his own residence--the German College.
In the spring of 1943, his operation broadened to include escaped BritishPOWs; and he acquired a most improbable partner, Sir Francis D'Arcy GodolphinOsborne, British Minister to the Vatican. The POWs would be safe in the Vatican,but as internees they would be unable to rejoin their fighting units. SirD'Arcy's status prevented him from leaving the Vatican, so Msgr. O'Flahertydeveloped a network of apartments in Rome in which they could hide.
In September the Germans occupied Rome. The Italian game of "forgetting"to round up Jews was over.
According to Msgr. O'Flaherty's biographer, J.P. Gallagher, Vatican officialswho had inclined to prudence and ordinary Italians who had been indifferentto the plight of the Jews were radicalized by the Gestapo. "Even the mostconservative men in the Vatican were prepared now to give the trouble-shootingMonsignor quite a bit more rope."
Monsignor O'Flaherty hid Jews in monasteries and convents, at Castel Gandolfo,in his old college of the Propaganda Fide, in the German College and in hisnetwork of apartments. Every evening, he stood in the porch of St. Peter's,in plain view both of the German soldiers across the piazza and of the windowsof the Pope's apartments. Escaped POWs and Jews would come to him there.He would smuggle them across the piazza and through the German Cemetary tothe college. Sometimes he would disguise them in the robes of a monsignoror the uniform of a Swiss Guard.
"One Jew," Gallagher reports, "made his way to St. Peter's and, coming upto O'Flaherty at his usual post on the steps and drawing him deeper intothe shadows, proceeded to unwind a solid gold chain that went twice aroundhis waist. 'My wife and I expect to be arrested at any moment,' said theJew. 'We have no way of escaping. When we are taken to Germany we shall die.But we have a small son; he is only seven and is too young to die in a Nazigas chamber. Please take this chain and take the boy for us too. Each linkof the chain will keep him alive for a month. Will you save him?'"
Monsignor O'Flaherty improved upon this plan: he accepted the chain, hidthe boy and procured false papers for the parents. At the end of the war,he returned the boy and the chain.
Colonel Herbert Kappler, Rome's Gestapo chief, set several traps for Msgr.O'Flaherty. Once he escaped by a rolling-block charge through Gestapo menand in at the doors of St. Mary Major--extraterritorial property of theChurch. Another time, he was at the palace of Prince Filippo Doria Pamphili,who provided funds for his operations. The SS surrounded the palace; Msgr.O'Flaherty escaped to the basement, then up a coal chute and away in thecoal truck that had been making a delivery.
Finally Colonel Kappler complained to Berlin. Monsignor O'Flaherty receivedan invitation to a reception at the Hungarian Embassy, with an implicitsafe-conduct. There Baron von Weiszacker, the German Ambassador, told him:"Nobody in Rome honors you more than I do for what you are doing. But ithas gone too far for us all. Kappler is waiting in the hall, feeling ratherfrustrated.... I have told him that you will of course have safe-conductback to the Vatican tonight. But...if you ever step outside Vatican territoryagain, on whatever pretext, you will be arrested at once.... Now willyou please think about what I have said?"
O'Flaherty smiled down at von Weiszacker and replied: "Your Excellency istoo considerate. I will certainly think about what you have said--sometimes!"
Of 9,700 Roman Jews, 1,007 were shipped to Auschwitz. The rest werehidden, 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 1,500in monasteries, convents and colleges. The remaining 3,700 were hidden inprivate homes, including Msgr. O'Flaherty's network of apartments.
After the war, Colonel Kappler was sentenced to life in the Gaeta prison,between Rome and Naples. His only visitor was an Irish monsignor who cameonce a month. In 1959 Msgr. O'Flaherty baptized Herbert Kappler into theCatholic Church.
"Elsewhere in Italy," Pinchas Lapide says, "thanks in part to the liftingof the enclosure...at least 40,000 Italian Jews and others who had managedto flee to Italy were hidden and saved by humble priests, monks, farmersand laborers, dozens of whom lost their lives for sheltering them."
After the war O'Flarherty was named Notary of the Holy Office, the firstIrishman to receive that honor. In 1960, he retired to Cahirciveen, CountyKerry, where he died in 1963, and is buried in Cahersiveen.
ScarletPimpernel of the Vatican J.P. Gallagher, Scarlet Pimpernel of the VaticanNew York: Coward-McCann), 1968, p.63. ISBN 000621892X
"It was the most gigantic game of hide-and-seek you've ever seen," saidWilliam Simpson, but the stakes were enormous in 1944 as 75,000 escaped Britishand American prisoners of war took refuge in the farmhouses and flats ofItaly while German troops scoured the country in search of them." Major WilliamSimpson
Simpson, then a major in the British army, was one of those escaped prisoners,and he claims that it was the courage of an Irish priest working out of theVatican and the pluck of the Italian people in general that got the escapedsoldiers through the deadly eight-month-long game of cat and mouse.
Simpson pieces it all together in his fast-paced book"AVatican Lifeline", which tells a little-known tale of the "remarkablycourageous" and resourceful job done by thousands of everyday Italians toprotect Allied soldiers trapped behind enemy lines during the final stagesof World War II.
A Scottish Presbyterian, Simpson tells firsthand how Jewish refugees andescaped war prisoners alike were given refuge in the basements and atticsof many Catholic seminaries and universities throughout Rome, through theassistance of Msgr. Hugh O'Flaherty of the Vatican diplomatic corps.Simpson has great respect for the Vatican, and particularly for the determinedIrish monsignor who assisted thousands of soldiers, Jews and refugees ofmany other creeds and nationalities hidden throughout Rome and the Italiancountryside. It was through Msgr. O'Flaherty's unofficial organizationthat the war refugees received food, clothing and money to reimburse theirhosts -- what Simpson calls a "Vatican lifeline."
Simpson was among the thousands of soldiers captured in Africa during earlystages of the war with Germany and was later transferred to prison campsin Italy.Simpson and his group, with the help of a village girl, made contactwith Msgr. O'Flaherty in Rome, first receiving financial assistancethrough the pipeline the priest had established. Then, as the German'swere about to snare his group, they fled to Rome with the hope of linkingup with the monsignor. It was Simpson's attention to detail in reportinghow funds were expended that prompted the monsignor to enlist him in a keyrole of distributing food and funds to the thousands of soldiers secretlybilleted throughout Rome. German security troops were watching Msgr.O'Flaherty, suspecting his activities, and Simpson was among severalpeople he drafted to continue his efforts. "He was a fantastic man," Simpsonsaid of his Vatican benefactor. "He used to play games with the Germans,"going out whenever he needed to, even though he was subject to arrest. Heeven treated Simpson to a tour of Rome with a running lecture on its history.Only after the monsignor received a stern warning from the Germans was theoperation moved into the Vatican grounds. Then Simpson and others, with forgedidentity cards, had to pass the scrutiny of the Swiss Guards before gainingadmission.
Originally, the operation was funded with 150,000 lire from a wealthy privatedonor. Eventually, the British extended a line of credit for Msgr.O'Flaherty's unsanctioned activities through the Vatican bank.
He was the kind of villain that we love to hate in the movies. But this wasno movie: It was the city of Rome under Nazi rule during the Second WorldWar. Our villain is Colonel Herman Kappler, commander of the SS forces occupyingRome. As villains go, he has an impressive resume: * Upon the occupationof Rome the Gestapo demanded a multimillion dollar ransom for the lives ofthe Roman Jews. With the help of Pope Pius XII, the chief rabbi of Rome raisedthe money within 24 hours, but the Nazis weren't satisfied, and under Kappler'ssupervision began to herd the Jews away in cattle trucks and wagons boundfor the concentration camps.
* Kappler's SS routinely tortured and executed suspected members of theresistance.
* When a bomb planted by the militant communist underground killed 32 Germansoldiers in Rome, Kappler responded by randomly selecting 320 mostly civilianprisoners for slaughter -- a 10-to-1 reprisal -- including political prisoners,petty thieves and prostitutes. They were bound, marched through the streetsof Rome, herded onto trucks and mowed down by machine gun fire in the ArdeatineCaves. The entrances to the caves were blown up, sealing the dead and woundedbehind hundreds of tons of rock.
For all his brutality, Kappler had not been able to capture the man who wasbehind the massive underground network that aided escaped Allied POWs andJews in Rome. Kappler knew who the man was, but there was a problem: He wasa Vatican priest. As long as he remained on neutral Vatican territory, Kapplercouldn't touch him.
But this tough Irish priest was not the neutral territory type: MonsignorHugh O'Flaherty was a tall, broad-shouldered, accomplished amateur boxerwho didn't run away from a fight. Through his wit and impressive golf gamehe had won over many of Rome's elite and was unlikely to sit out the warand allow his contacts to go unused. So Kappler had O'Flaherty watched, andfinally, on one brilliant sunny winter morning, had him cornered.
The Nazi SS had the palazzo of Prince Filipo Doria Pamphili surrounded.O'Flaherty was inside. Colonel Kappler stepped out of his black limousineto personally apprehend the troublesome priest. O'Flaherty raced down a narrowstone staircase into the cellar -- no way out, nowhere to hide. The Germanswere in the building now -- he could hear them yelling upstairs. They'd pullthe place apart looking for him and would burst into the cellar in moments.
Too much was at stake for too many people for him to surrender to Kapplernow -- especially for Prince Filipo and the others upstairs who were compromisedby O'Flaherty's presence. If he could somehow escape, the Nazis wouldn'tbe able to prove he had been there and would be forced to let the matterdrop.
As he edged along the passageway that led to the cellar beneath the courtyard,he noticed a strange sound, like rocks rolling down a stone mountain face.As he moved closer to the sound, he saw light -- daylight! The prince's wintercoal supply was sliding into a coal bin through an open trapdoor in thecourtyard.
He scrambled up the pile of shifting coal and stuck his head out of the trapdoor.Two Italian coalmen were between him and the courtyard gates where the SStroops were keeping watch for him. The coal truck was parked outside thegates.
O'Flaherty took off his black monsignor's robe and hat put them into an emptycoal sack. He tore his collarless shirt to his waist and rubbed coal dustall over himself from head to toe. With the cooperation of one of the coalmenwho had no love for the Nazis, O'Flaherty strolled right past the two linesof SS troops, who disdainfully gave him a broad berth so they wouldn't gettheir uniforms dirty.
When he was out of the soldiers' sight, he took his priestly robe and hatout of the coal sack slung over his shoulder, tucked them under his arm,and rushed to the nearest church, where he cleaned up and set off for thesafety of the Vatican. After several hours, he called Prince Filipo who saidthat everyone was safe and that Kappler was furious.
A few months earlier, this Catholic priest from neutral Ireland working inthe neutral Vatican city-state during the Second World War would never haveimagined being in such a predicament. He had grown up an IRA sympathizerwho detested the British. As a result, in the early years of the war, hedismissed accounts of German atrocities as Allied propaganda. "I read thepropaganda on both sides," he would say, "and I don't believe much of it.I don't think there is anything to choose between Britain and Germany."
And so O'Flaherty's efforts to aid escaping Allied POWs could just as easilyhave been made on behalf of escaping Nazi POWs if he had been in the midstof an Allied occupation. Initially he was simply helping souls in need.
But the sight of the Nazis carting away Roman Jews in 1943 made it impossiblefor O'Flaherty to remain neutral.
The Nazis' treatment of the Roman Jews transformed O'Flaherty, who in turntransformed his fledgling, informal network of contacts into a massive partisaneffort to save as many Allied soldiers and Roman Jews as possible. He cameto understand that the Nazis had to be defeated. As a result, this Irishmanwho detested the British saved more Allied lives than any other single personin World War II -- more British than any other nationality. His efforts earnedhim the nickname, "the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican," and he was decorated,ironically, a Commander of the British Empire.
Kappler and O'Flaherty played a life-and-death cat-and-mouse game in whichO'Flaherty always managed to stay one step ahead of his archnemesis. Infrustration, Kappler even attempted to have the Irish priest forcibly draggedoff the neutral Vatican territory and assassinated. O'Flaherty's networkgot wind of the plan and arranged instead for the two Gestapo assassins toreceive a good beating at the hands of four Swiss guards.
The bitter rivalry between this German Nazi and this Irish priest sets thestage for O'Flaherty's most remarkable rescue.
After the war, Colonel Kappler was tried and convicted for war crimes. Hewas sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the slaughter of the 320at the Ardeatine Caves.
Over 50 years later, our popular imagination still strains to contrive avillain more detestable than a Nazi war criminal who sent Jews to concentrationcamps and tortured and murdered innocent civilians.
Only one person ever visited Kappler in prison. For years, almost every month,a tall, broad-shouldered figure of a man would call on the former Nazi. Itwas the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, on adifferent kind of rescue mission, reaching out to a soul in need.
More than most of us, this tough Irishman had the courage to fight evil andto seek justice at tremendous personal risk. But he also knew that we arecalled to love our enemies and that even villains need mercy.
Forgiveness is not saying the offense never happened. It did. Forgivenessis not saying that everything's okay. It isn't. Forgiveness is not sayingwe no longer feel the pain of the offense. We do. For Father O'Flaherty,forgiveness was saying "I still feel the pain, but I am willing to let goof your involvement in my pain."
In fact, Father O'Flaherty in March 1959, Herman Kappler, former SS colonel,Nazi war criminal, sought forgiveness and salvation in the waters of baptismpoured by the hand of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty.
From Richard Owen in Rome
The Times July 3, 2000 EUROPE
"An Irish priest in the Vatican during the Second World War who was hailedas a hero for saving the lives of Jews and Allied prisoners may have beena Nazi informer, according to CIA archives.
"The Nazis had a Deep Throat inside the Vatican," La Repubblica said yesterday.It was not clear, however, whether Mgr Hugh O'Flaherty, whose life-savingexploits were made into a film starring Gregory Peck, gave information tothe SS "wittingly or unwittingly", the newspaper said.
It was possible Mgr O'Flaherty tried to mislead the Germans, the report added,since the SS document, from newly opened CIA archives, naming him as a sourcegives inaccurate information about proposed Allied landings in Italy.
The 1983 film The Scarlet and the Black, which also starred John Gielgudas Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) showed how Mgr O'Flaherty earned the title "theOscar Schindler of Killarney" by hiding 4,000 Jews and escaped Allied prisoners.Killarney is proposing to erect a bronze statue of O'Flaherty to honour him.
The doubts over his activities come amid continuing controversy over theVatican's relationship with Nazi Germany. The proposed beatification of PiusXII is bitterly opposed by Jewish groups who say he ignored Nazi atrocitiesand helped Hitler to win power.
Pius XII's supporters insist that he condemned Nazism and, like Mgr O'Flaherty,saved Jewish lives. Jewish activists also oppose beatification of Pius IX,a 19th-century pontiff accused of forcibly converting a Jewish boy toChristianity because he had been baptised by the family maid.
The reference to O'Flaherty, the representative in the war-time Vatican ofthe American Red Cross, is contained in documents released by the CIA atCollege Park in Maryland. La Repubblica said: "Thanks to the Enigma decodingmachine, the British Secret Services knew that the SS had an informer - willingor unwilling - inside the Vatican".
It quoted an SS commander as reporting to Berlin in October 1943 that MgrO'Flaherty had warned a secure source that Anglo-American forces were preparinga landing in Italy, either at Civitavecchia or in Sardinia, and that theRussians opposed a similar landing in the Balkans.
In the event the Allies, who landed first in Sicily, invaded the mainlandnot at Civitavecchia, on the coast north of Rome, but at Salerno and laterAnzio, south of Rome.
The documents also appear to implicate Cardinal Ildebrando Schuster, Archbishopof Milan, by suggesting that he was involved in the transfer of "large sumsof money" from Milan to Rome by Nazi agents at the war's end. Reports said,however, that the cardinal may not have been aware of who held the bank accountsand that the transfers came at a time when he was offering his "good offices"as a channel of negotiation between the Germans and advancing Allies.
Timothy Naftali, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, whois analysing the 400,000 documents, said they also contained embarrassmentsfor the Allies. Last week it emerged that British intelligence was awareof the planned deportation of more than 100,000 Jews from Rome in October1943 but failed to act. "The British were looking for military secrets, nothumanitarian issues," Professor Naftali told Il Giornale."
This page created May 2000 for County Kerry, Ireland at
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