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Hugh O'Flaherty
Monsignor • Ireland • 1895–1963
Rescued approximately 6,500 Allied soldiers and Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Rome while the Gestapo hunted him.
Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty was an Irish Catholic priest at the Vatican when Rome was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1943. He organized an underground network that hid and rescued approximately 6,500 Allied soldiers, escaped POWs, and Jewish refugees in monasteries, convents, and private apartments across Rome. He operated freely under Vatican protection while SS Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Kappler personally ordered his assassination. After the war, O'Flaherty visited Kappler in prison, where the SS officer, converted to Catholicism, recognized the man he had tried to kill.