Hugh O'Flaherty (28 February 1898 – 30 October 1963), was an Irish Catholic priest and senior official of the Roman Curia, and a significant figure in Catholic resistance to Nazism. During World War II, 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 O'Flaherty the nickname "The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican". After the Second World War he was named a papal domestic prelate by Pope Pius XII and served as notary of the Holy Office, working alongside and assisting Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani until 1960. Early life Shortly after Hugh O'Flaherty's birth in Lisrobin, Kiskeam, County Cork, his parents, James and Margaret, moved to Killarney. The family lived on the golf course where James O'Flaherty worked as a steward. By his late teens, young O'Flaherty had a scratch handicap and a scholarship to a teacher training college. However, in 1918 he enrolled at Mungret College, a Jesuit college in County Limerick dedicated to preparing young men for missionary priesthood. Normally, students ranged from 14 to 18 years of age. At the time when O'Flaherty came in, he was a little older than most of the students, about 20. The college allowed for some older people to come in if they had been accepted by a bishop who would pay for them. O'Flaherty's sponsor was the Bishop of Cape Town, Cornelius O'Reilly, in whose diocese he would be posted after ordination, a big step for a young man who had never set foot outside of Munster. At the time when O'Flaherty was in Mungret, the Irish War for Independence was ongoing. He was posted to Rome in 1922 to finish his studies and was ordained on 20 December 1925. He never joined his diocese however, staying to work for the Holy See and serving as a Vatican diplomat in Egypt, Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Czechoslovakia. In 1934, he was appointed a papal chamberlain with the title of Monsignor. He was originally ascribed to the Sacred Congregation De Propaganda Fide through which, in collaboration with the Cardinal Prefect, H.Em. Pietro of the marquesses Fumasoni Biondi and the Pro-Rector of the Pontifical Urban College De Propaganda Fide, Monsignor Saverio Maria of the barons Paventi di San Bonaventura, he began to establish his precious network of assistants with whom he managed to save approximately 6,500 people amongst civilians,