Hugh O'Flaherty - A Case Study in Loving Your Enemies.

 Last year I got a stack of World War II movies for a bargain at a local store. In that stack is the priceless true story of Hugh O'Flaherty during World War II. O'Flaherty was a priest in the Vatican in Rome. This ingenious priest was the mastermind of an underground movement to house and save over 6,500 jews and allied soldiers. He was so audacious that the nazi germans painted a large circle around the vatican saying that if O'flaherty crossed that line he would be killed. This did not hold him back. Instead he would disguise himself as a nun, a street cleaner, a beggar, etc. in order to get into travel incognito throughout Rome to help refugees. He was so daring that he even dressed up as a German general in order to go into a German prison and give last communion to a fellow priest who was to be exectuted.

The stunts and risks that he took were amazing. For example, they housed many Jews and refugees in a house next door to the gestapo offices. They seemed always to be one step ahead of them. However, what is most unique about this man's story is what he did after the war. Herbert Kappler, the head of the Nazi occupation force, who was determined to kill O'flaherty recieved a sentence of life in prison. For the next months and years that followed rarely did anyone ever visit Kappler, no one that is except for O'Flaherty who monthly visited his old nemesis. A few years later, O'Flaherty baptized Kappler into the catholic faith. This is an amazing story of someone who followed the teachings of Jesus of loving his neighbor as himself even when that neighbor used to be an enemy.