After several years of litigation, Pope Francis took control of the Order of Malta on Saturday by canceling its governing bodies and appointing a provisional Sovereign Council.
In a decree published by the Vatican, the Pope announces that he has promulgated the "
new Constitutional Charter
" of the Order and its "
immediate entry into force
".
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François also decided “
to dismiss all high offices, to dissolve the current Sovereign Council and to set up a provisional Sovereign Council
”, of which he personally appointed the 13 members.
The latter will have to organize for next January an extraordinary general Chapter (Assembly, note) to implement all the decisions of the pope, specifies the decree.
The Order of Malta, founded in Jerusalem and recognized by the Pope in 1113, is both an unusual state without territory based in Rome, a religious order and a powerful charitable organization.
It now has 13,500 knights, including fifty religious, who take care of the hospital and humanitarian work of the Order with more than 100,000 employees or volunteers present in 120 countries.
The crisis within the Order and in its relations with the Vatican began with a dispute at the top of the Order in 2016 when the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, who is its head, asked the Grand Chancellor to resign.
A religious order
Some Knights of the Order object and ask the Pope to intervene.
François sends a commission of inquiry and also obtains the resignation of the Grand Master, all of whose decisions are annulled.
The pope then appoints a “
pontifical delegate
”, his personal representative to the Order, and from this moment begins work on a vast reform of the Constitutional Charter of the Order.
The discussions proved to be difficult on a specific point: the sovereignty of the Order of Malta.
The draft reform of the Constitutional Charter prepared by the pontifical delegate provides that the Order of Malta be "
a subject of the Holy See
", that is to say of the Vatican, which the knights refuse, fearing to see the Order reduced to "
an association of religious
", according to the Italian religious information site Korazym.
In his decree, Pope Francis recalls a decision taken in 1953 by a Court of Cardinals according to which "
the prerogatives of the Order (...) do not constitute this set of prerogatives and powers specific to sovereign States
".
"
Being a religious order, it depends (...) therefore on the Holy See
", concludes Pope Francis.
