Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty
A Race Well Run.
O’Flaherty suffered the first of two strokes in June 1960, and retired from the Holy Office in September. After two years in the US working for the L.A. Curia, he returned to Ireland. On October 30, 1963, he died peacefully at the home of his sister, in Cahirciveen. His grave is simple: “In Loving Memory of Fr. Rev. Mgr. Hugh O’Flaherty born 28th February 1898, ordained 20th December 1925, died 30th October 1963. R.I.P.”A grove of Italian trees was planted in Killarney National Park as a memorial to him. Another tree stands in his honor in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. And the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Authority conferred on him the title “Righteous Among Nations.”
But all that came later. At the time of O’Flaherty’s death, it was a fellow Kerryman, Father Francis Joy, who wrote this obituary for him:
“Hugh O’Flaherty was above all a generous honest-to-God Irishman without guile. His big heart was open to any and every distress and he was lavish in his efforts to assuage suffering in any form, a facet of his character with made him an easy target for any hard-luck story . . . His career in the Vatican was not without its checks and frustrations. But with his sunny disposition he was proof against such embarrassments. And above all one could say of him that, without ostentation, his life was always ordered to using his powers in fair weather or foul for the glory of God.