News Briefs

Father Ivan Montelongo, age 30 (seated at left), of El Paso, Texas, is one of 11 U.S. delegates to the Synod on Synodality. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN

Vatican City, Oct 20, 2023 / 12:30 pm (CNA).
“I think we all agree when I say that we are t… […]

null / Credit: Denis Belitsky/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Oct 20, 2023 / 11:35 am (CNA).
Astronomers gathered at the Vatican Observatory this month to hear the results of major research into thousands of previously hidden galaxies that the Milky Wa… […]

When the Nazis occupied Rome for nine months following the fall of Mussolini, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty created what came to be known as the “Rome Escape Line.” / Patrick Leonard/EWTN

Vatican City, Oct 20, 2023 / 09:40 am (CNA).

Many people know Irish Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty from Hollywood’s portrayal of his life in “The Scarlet and the Black,” the film based on a real-life Catholic hero who was honored at the Vatican this week. 

Ireland’s President Michael Higgins in a Vatican ceremony on Oct. 19 paid tribute to O’Flaherty, an Irish priest who hid Italian Jews from the Nazis and went on to baptize the former head of the Gestapo in Rome.

The wreath-laying ceremony marked the 60th anniversary of O’Flaherty’s death on Oct. 30, 1963. The ceremony took place in the Vatican’s Teutonic Cemetery, where a plaque commemorates O’Flaherty as a “tireless defender of the weak and oppressed” who saved more than 6,000 lives during World War II. 

Higgins praised the Irish priest for his “wonderful courageous work in the most terrible of times.”

“It took great courage and took great commitment and it was morally so striking that somebody did all of that for those threatened,” the Irish president told EWTN. 

Born in County Cork in 1898, O’Flaherty grew up in Killarney playing golf on the course where his father worked as a steward before discerning his vocation to the priesthood.

As a seminarian, O’Flaherty studied theology in Rome at the Urban College of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith and went on to earn doctorates in both canon law and philosophy in Rome.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1925 and became a Vatican diplomat, during which time he served in posts in Haiti, Egypt, and Czechoslovakia.

During World War II, O’Flaherty lived in the German College inside Vatican City State and worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then known as the Holy Office. 

The Holy See assigned O’Flaherty the task of visiting the Italian prisoner-of-war camps, where he brought books, cigarettes, chocolate, and hope to the English-speaking Allied prisoners, according to the Hugh O’Flaherty Memorial Society. After these visits, the priest used Vatican Radio to contact the prisoners’ relatives.

When the Nazis occupied Rome for nine months following the fall of Mussolini, O’Flaherty created what came to be known as the “Rome Escape Line” — a network of priests, diplomats, and expatriates in Rome who helped to hide more than 6,000 escaped Allied POWs and Jews in convents, monasteries, and residences.

Among those, O’Flaherty hid 50 people in his Vatican residence, the Pontifical Teutonic College, during the war years. 

Secret meetings among members of the Rome Escape Line to exchange documents and information on safe houses took place inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the foot of Michaelangelo’s Pieta or near the Altar of the Chair, according to the Vatican.

After the liberation in Rome in 1944, the head of the German SS Herbert Kappler was sentenced in 1948 to life imprisonment in solitary confinement in Italy. O’Flaherty went to the prison to visit Kappler — who had previously threatened to torture and kill the Irish priest — every month for 10 years.

In 1959, O’Flaherty baptized Kappler and received the converted war criminal into the Catholic Church.

With the opening of Vatican archives from the pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958), historians have been further researching O’Flaherty’s life and legacy. 

“In his native Kerry they are very very proud of this wonderful man that they produced at the heart of the Vatican who was able to do so much,” Higgins told EWTN.

“It is very appropriate that he be remembered and honored, and also that his example be repeated.”

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Pope Francis prayed for migrants and refugees with the delegates of the Synod on Synodality at St. Peter’s Square on Thursday evening, Oct. 19, 2023. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN/Vatican Pool

Vatican City, Oct 20, 2023 / 09:09 am (CNA).

Pope Francis prayed for migrants and refugees with the delegates of the Synod on Synodality just after sunset on Thursday evening.

The simple, 25-minute prayer service took place in a quiet St. Peter’s Square in front of Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz’s “Angels Unawares” sculpture. The bronze statue, installed in the square in 2019, depicts migrants from different times and places in history aboard a boat.

A visibly tired Pope Francis, seated in a wheelchair, was pushed into a closed and mostly empty St. Peter’s Square about 15 minutes early Oct. 19. The 364 delegates and about 90 other synod participants arrived shortly afterward from their meeting in the nearby Paul VI Hall.

The prayer moment was organized as part of the Oct. 4–29 Synod on Synodality at the Vatican and was one of many opportunities for synod members to pray together over the course of the monthlong meeting.

Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, told journalists earlier in the day that it would be “a beautiful opportunity to prayerfully reenact what we are talking about and trying to appreciate in the synod.”

“The assembly, which is learning how to walk together as a Church, will effectively symbolize walking together with some of the most vulnerable people on our planet: Those who are fleeing, those who are forced to be on the move, those whom we call migrants and refugees,” he said.

The prayer opened with a reading from the Gospel of Luke 10:25-37, which includes the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Pope Francis then gave a short reflection, in which he said: “We can never be grateful enough to St. Luke for passing on to us this parable of the Lord.”

“This parable is also at the heart of the encyclical Fratelli Tutti because it is a key, I would say the key, to moving from the closure of a world to an open world, from a world at war to the peace of another world,” he said.

The pope recalled the many difficulties faced by migrants today, including being taken advantage of by traffickers, “kidnapped, imprisoned, exploited, and enslaved,” and “humiliated, tortured, raped.”

“So many of them die without ever reaching their destination,” he said. “The migration routes of our time are filled with men and women who are wounded and left half-dead, our brothers and sisters whose pain cries out before God.”

Pope Francis pointed out the need to create safe paths for people to migrate and said “it is also necessary to promote a common and co-responsible approach to the governance of migration flows, which appear set to increase in the coming years.”

The lesson from the parable of the Good Samaritan, he explained, is to have compassion: “Like the Good Samaritan, we are called to be neighbors to all the wayfarers of our time, to save their lives, to heal their wounds, and to soothe their pain.”

“For many, tragically, it is too late, and we are left only to weep over their graves, if they even have a grave, or the Mediterranean ends up being their grave. Yet the Lord knows the face of each of them, and he does not forget it,” he said.

Francis concluded his reflection by asking for a moment of silence to remember those who have lost their lives or become enslaved or exploited along migration routes.

Three refugees from Cameroon, Ukraine, and El Salvador and two officials from the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development read the intercessory prayers.

The prayer ended with the recitation of the Our Father and then the pope gave his blessing.

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