During the German occupation of Rome from 1942-1944, Irishman Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty ran an escape organisation for Allied POWs and civilians, including Jews. He built a network of contacts and safe locations, and helpers included communists, British soldiers, the singer Delia Murphy and many others. The work was dangerous. Safe within the Vatican state, he regularly ventured out in disguise to continue his mission, which earned him the nickname ‘the Pimpernel of the Vatican’. Kappler, the Gestapo chief in Rome, ordered him captured or killed. When the Allies entered Rome he and his colleagues had saved over 6,500 lives. Kappler was sentenced to life, and his only visitor, monthly, was O’Flaherty. O’Flaherty was awarded the highest honours, including a CBE (UK), the Congressional Medal (US), and was the first Irishman named Notary of the Holy Office. He retired to Cahersiveen in 1960. Eight million viewers watched him in 1963 on BBC’s This Is Your Life. Within months he had died and his death was reported by papers all over the world. In 1983 he was immortalised in the film, The Scarlet and the Black, starring Gregory Peck as O’Flaherty. Yet the only monument to him in Ireland is a grove of Italian trees planted in Killarney National Park in 1994 by his family and friends. The name of this great and good man is largely forgotten in his native Ireland. Brian Fleming, a former member of the Oireachtas, has been a teacher for many years and is currently Principal of Collinstown Park Community College in Dublin.