Pimpernel honoured
An Irish monsignor who helped to save 6,500 Jews and Allied Prisoners of War (PoWs) in occupied Rome during the Second World War was honoured by the Vatican on Sunday.

Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty became known as the “Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican” for his ability to evade Nazi efforts to capture him over his involvement in the Rome Escape Line. This helped to conceal Allied PoWs freed after the fall of Mussolini in 1943 but who the Nazis sought to re-capture.

Much of his clandestine operation was conducted from within the Vatican’s German College, where Monsignor O’Flaherty lived for 22 years.

At the unveiling of the Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty memorial plaque at the Teutonic (German) College in the Vatican, the Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, Emma Madigan, paid tribute to the Kerry priest’s “moral courage” in “very dark times”.