Hugh O'Flaherty

Hugh O'Flaherty CBE (28 February 1898 – 30 October 1963) was an Irish Catholic priest, a senior official of the Roman Curia and a significant figure in the Catholic resistance to Nazism. During the Second World War, O'Flaherty was responsible for saving 6,500 Allied soldiers and Jews. His ability to evade the traps set by the German Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) earned him the nickname "The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican".

After the war, he was named a papal domestic prelate by Pope Pius XII and served as notary of the Holy Office. He worked alongside and assisted Alfredo Ottaviani until 1960.

O'Flaherty was portrayed by Gregory Peck in the 1983 television film The Scarlet and the Black, which follows the exploits of O'Flaherty from the German occupation of Rome to its liberation by the Allies.

He was also the second principal character in a radio play by Robin Glendinning on Kappler's time seeking asylum in the Vatican, titled The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, which was first broadcast on 30 November 2006 on Radio 4, with Wolf Kahler as Kappler.

Killarney-born actor and playwright Donal Courtney penned a new one-man play entitled God Has No Country, which he premièred in Killarney as part of the Hugh O'Flaherty memorial celebrations for three nights in October 2013. Courtney portrays the O'Flaherty during the wartime years in German-occupied Rome; the story is told from the O'Flaherty's point of view and is a study of the torment and difficulty in the decisions he undertook in his fight for justice.

In 2023, Joseph O'Connor published My Father's House, a novel based on the exploits of O'Flaherty and his resistance group.