A Catholic priest used a vast underground network to save thousands of Jews, Allied prisoners, and anti-fascists from Nazi persecution during World War II. Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty (1898–1963) was an Irish Catholic priest and Vatican diplomat born in Kiskeam, Cork, and raised in Kerry. He rose through Vatican ranks, becoming a senior official in the Holy See. When Mussolini’s Italy fell in 1943 and the Nazis occupied Rome, he refused to stand by as they rounded up Jews and escaped Allied POWs. Using his Vatican connections and diplomatic status, he arranged safe houses, forged documents, and smuggled people to safety using a network of priests, nuns, diplomats, and ordinary Italians. His dangerous efforts helped save about 6,500 people. During this heroic mission he played a lethal game of a cat and mouse with the ruthless SS chief in Rome, Herbert Kappler. There was even a bounty on Irishmans head, forcing him to use clever disguises, secret signals, and Vatican immunity to evade capture. The Nazis even painted a white line at St. Peter’s Square to mark where they could arrest him...he never crossed it! After the war, in an extraordinary act of forgiveness, O’Flaherty visited Kappler in prison and eventually converted him to Catholicism. He returned to Ireland in his later years and died in 1963. He is commemorated across the world, including a bronze statue in Killarney and the US Congressional Medal of Freedom. His heroism was immortalised in the Gregory Peck movie "The Scarlet and the Black" (1983)