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Irish Men of the Cloth Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, the ‘Vatican Pimpernel’ Born in Lisrobin, Kiskeam in 1898 to a staunchly republican family, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty grew up in Killarney and earned his BA degree in Theology. He was ordained in Rome in 1925 and appointed to the Vatican Diplomatic Service, serving in Egypt, Haiti, Santo Domingo and Czechoslovakia before returning to Rome in 1938 to work in the Holy Office. A 1929, the Lateran treaty between the Italian Fascist government and the Pope had made the Vatican an independent state. Thus, unlike the rest of Italy, it was not under Nazi control during the war years. Monsignor O’Flaherty initially dismissed accounts of Nazi atrocities as Allied propaganda. When the war started, I used to listen to broadcasts from both sides. All propaganda, of course, makes the same terrible charges against the other. I frankly didn’t know which side to believe – until they started rounding up the Jews in Rome. They treated them like beasts. You know the sort of thing that happened after that. It got worse and worse, and I knew then which side I had to believe. In the autumn of 1942, he started smuggling and hiding refugees from the Germans and Italians, who were targeting prominent Jews and anti-Fascists. He had a network of helpers, prominent among whom were several Irish people. Every evening Monsignor O’Flaherty would stand in the porch of St Peter’s, in plain view of the German soldiers across the piazza. One of the Jews who approached him at his usual post proceeded to unwind a gold chain that went twice around his waist. My wife and I expect to be arrested at any moment, said the Jew. 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. Please take this chain and take the boy for us too. Each link of the chain will keep him alive for a month. Will you save him? The Monsignor improved upon this plan: he accepted the chain, hid the boy and procured false papers for the parents. At the end of the war he returned the boy and the chain. In the spring of 1943, Monsignor O’Flaherty’s operation broadened to include escaped British POWs caught behind enemy lines. His fledgling, informal network of contacts was transformed into The Organisation – a huge partisan effort to save Jews, soldiers and refugees of many creeds and nationalities. Monsignor O’Flaherty hid them in monasteries and convents, at Castel Gandolfo, in his old college of the Propaganda Fide, in his own residence, the German College, and in his network of apartments. He provided them with food, clothing and money to reimburse the Italian families who risked their lives to hide them. It is estimated that The Organisation and Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty were responsible for saving more than 6,500 people. On being asked about his exploits during the war, O’Flaherty remarked: These were dark days and I shall always remember the difficulties we had in trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. Monsignor O’Flaherty continued to help all those seeking assistance even after the liberation of Rome. He was awarded the CBE by Britain and the Silver Medal of Military Valour by the President of Italy. The Monsignor remained in Rome until his health deteriorated in 1960 and he returned to Caherciveen in Co Kerry after suffering a stroke. He died on 30 October 1963. In his obituary which appeared in the Mungret College Journal, Fr Francis Joy wrote: Hugh O’Flaherty was above all a generous honest-to-God Irishman without guile. His big heart was open to any and every distress and he was lavish in his efforts to assuage suffering in any form. A grove of trees was planted in memory of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty in the National Park in Killarney in 1994. To mark the occasion, the Irish poet Brendan Kennelly wrote: There is a tree called freedom and it grows Somewhere in the hearts of men, Rain falls, ice freezes, wind blows, The tree shivers, steadies itself again, Steadies itself like Hugh O’Flaherty’s hand, Guiding trapped and hunted people, day and night, To what all hearts love and understand, The tree of freedom upright in the light. From The Vatican Pimpernel, Brian Fleming, 2008 44
Holocaust Memorial Day 2009 Summons Meditate that this came about. Imagine. Pyjama ghosts tramp the shadow of a chimney. Shorn and nameless. Desolation’s mad machine With endless counts and selections. Try to see! For each who survived, every numbered Arm that tries to hold the wedding guest, A thousand urgent stories forever unheard; In each testimony a thousand more suppressed. A Polish horizon glows with stifled cries: Who’ll wake us from this infinite nightmare? Out of the cone of Vesuvius their lives rise To sky-write gaunt silences in the frozen air. A summons to try to look, to try to see. A muted dead demand their debt of memory. Micheal O’Siadhail 45
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