Hugh O'Flaherty - Early Life

Early Life

Shortly after the birth of Hugh O'Flaherty in Lisrobin, Kiskeam, County Cork, his parents, James and Margaret, moved to Killarney. The family lived on the golf course where James worked as a steward. By his late teens, young O'Flaherty had a scratch handicap and a scholarship to a teacher training college. But his destiny lay elsewhere. In 1918, he enrolled at Mungret, a Jesuit college in 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 bit 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 stepped foot outside of Munster. At the time when O'Flaherty was in Mungret, there was a lot of conflict in Ireland. He was posted to Rome in 1922 to finish his studies and was ordained on 20 December 1925. He would never join his diocese. Instead, he stayed to work for the Holy See, serving as a Vatican diplomat in Egypt, Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Czechoslovakia. In 1934, O'Flaherty received the title of Monsignor.