War hero cleric to get hometown commemoration

A statue is to be erected in Killarney commemorating Second World War hero Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who risked his life to save over 6,500 Jewish people and British POWs from the Nazis in German-occupied Rome.

Known as the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, Hugh O’Flaherty was born in Kiskeam, Co Cork and brought up in Killarney. During his wartime posting in Rome as a Vatican diplomat, the Gestapo put a contract on his life.

However, after the war he befriended his jailed nemesis, Gestapo chief Herbert Kappler, who had put the contract on his life and O’Flaherty converted him to Catholicism.

Since Mons O’Flaherty’s death in 1963, aged 65, there has been worldwide interest in the daring cleric’s cat and mouse games with the Gestapo.

The New York Times tribute said: “His death was mourned throughout the world.”

Yet in Ireland, Mons O’Flaherty was largely forgotten except for a grove of trees planted in Killarney National Park in 1994 by his family and friends.

The Hugh O’Flaherty Memorial Society, founded in 1998, plans to make up for over half a century of neglect by erecting a life-sized monument of Mons O’Flaherty, which will be based on a Second World War photo of the priest meeting liberation soldiers in Rome’s St Peter’s Square.

Committee secretary Jerry O’Grady says the monument has already been commissioned and will be erected later this year. “It is the aim of the memorial committee to ensure that there is a permanent and fitting tribute to him in his home town of Killarney and to raise greater awareness of his great deeds in the community and in Ireland.

“He was an incredible man. He was never acknowledged in his own country because the great majority of the people he saved were British POWs, and in those times that was not seen as being politically correct,” he said.

“A site has been chosen close to the town centre at the junction of Beech Road and Mission Road.

“The Hugh O’Flaherty Memorial Society is currently raising funds for the memorial, which is the work of Valentia-based sculptor and artist Alan Ryan Hall.

“The design features a priest in a flowing cassock, hat in hand, striding across the cobblestones of Rome.”