Joseph O’Connor on his novel My Father’s House and the brave Munster man who inspired it
Hugh O'Flaherty is the subject of Joseph O'Connor's latest novel, My Father's House
I can’t remember the first time I heard the story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty (1898 - 1963), but I think it might have been in Listowel. I’ve been attending the world famous Writers’ Week on and off for 30 years, since my very first efforts at writing. At some point, late one night, someone told me about Hugh O’Flaherty and the Escape Line he organised and led in Rome during the Second World War. Over the years, I researched and read more about him. I was always more amazed by his legacy.
Hugh O’Flaherty’s heroism is both gripping and inspiring. It always had the makings of a tense psychological thriller, and that’s what I hope I’ve written. A novel in the same vein of my Star of the Sea. But there are other nuances and meanings to his story.
Born in republican Cork, brought up in Kerry, the place he always called home, he came of age around the mistrust of England and in particular, English soldiers, that was one understandable and tragic bequest of the Black and Tans. Yet he came to live insistently by his own moral code, even when faced with the threat of death, and at the risk of being ostracised by his Vatican superiors.
In siding with the British prisoners to whom he was called to minister in the fascist prison of war camps in Italy, and in assisting thousands of them to safety when they escaped and fled into Rome, O’Flaherty revealed himself as a person who wouldn’t blindly follow orders, whether they came from friend or enemy.
Complaints were made about him by the Irish government, whose policy was strict neutrality, but he ignored them, saving 7,000 escaped British and American prisoners from death.
In this he was assisted by a small band of remarkable friends, several of whom came from very different backgrounds and faiths. There was Sir Francis Darcy Osborne, Britain’s ambassador to the Holy See, a public-school educated member of the higher echelons of British society, who had at one time, so it is said, been in love with the late Queen Mother. He and Hugh became close friends and co-conspirators.
Another member of this hugely impressive crew was John May, a Cockney, Sir Francis’s servant at the UK embassy. Also assisting the Escape Line was Delia Kiernan, who will be known to fans of Irish folk music and balladry as the singer Delia Murphy. Married to Ireland’s senior diplomat in Rome, she quietly flouted Dublin’s insistence on non-involvement in the war, showing tremendous personal and moral courage.
There were other leaders, too, some of whose names we will never know: nuns, priests, everyday working-class Romans, communists, partisans, students. All were united by their work for humanity, always done at grave personal danger.
Hugh’s priesthood would not have saved him. The Gestapo in Rome, led by the ruthless Herbert Kappler, used torture, intimidation and murdered several Roman priests. Hugh was well aware of the peril he was facing, yet he faced it. In the murky world of wartime, no doubt he knew, and perhaps dealt with, double agents and imposters of various sorts. What kept him steady was his faith, his remarkable instincts, and his willingness to disobey authority when necessary.
Born in the Rebel County and raised in the Kingdom, Hugh O’Flaherty was nobody’s fool.
His personal papers, many of which I had the opportunity to study while researching My Father’s House, reveal a deeply humane, sometimes funny, wry, watchful man, who understood how the organisation that is the Catholic Church worked and was able to sail carefully but effectively around archipelagos of political intriguing.
He had a lovable affection for life, for sport, including boxing and golf, even for the occasional punt on the Irish sweepstakes, and enjoyed hearing all the gossip from back home in Kerry. The beautiful statue of him by Alan Ryan Hall in Killarney, placed there in 2013, captures something of his vigour, grit and joi de vivre. Maybe a hint of his cunning, too, in the half smile. One of his sayings, ‘God Has No Country,’ is inscribed on a nearby wall. A message the world still needs to hear, alas.
The Hugh in my novel is a fictional character, inspired by the real man. The Hugh O’Flaherty Memorial society (www.hughoflaherty.com) does a fine job of celebrating his achievement, and there have been articles, nonfiction books, and a documentary, Pimpernel Sa Vatican. made by his grand-niece Catherine O’Flaherty for TG4.
For my own part, I’ve taken license with characterisations, events and chronologies, in a work of the imagination.
I emphasize that my Hugh is my version, and I have filled in several silences. My Father’s House isn’t intended to be a textbook or biography, but I hope that my novel does conjure the essence of this wonderful man, who has been part of my life for many years.
Hugh O’Flaherty’s story is a tale of borders and boundaries, how the Nazis painted a white line around Vatican City to keep him inside, how he would taunt them by meeting his contacts in St Peter’s Square itself, in open view of the German sentries.
He and his friends risked absolutely everything, even the destruction of his beloved Vatican City, the physical embodiment of his faith, for what was right.
His stubborn, quiet defiance – some might say an Irish trait, even perhaps a Kerry one – was magnificent. That this amazing man was one of us, a hero when it was hard to be, is cause for pride and thought. And in our own time, when once again there is far too much false focus on the things that supposedly divide us – nationality, tribe, religion, belief – it’s good to be reminded that Hugh O’Flaherty and the small, brave band of women and men he gathered around him stood up to the world and said, no.
- My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor is published by Harvill Secker and is available in shops and online from January 26.
- Joseph O’Connor will be live in conversation with Flor MacCarthy in the Pavilion Theatre in Dún Laoghaire on February 1. paviliontheatre.ie
