Pope Francis took control of the Order of Malta this Saturday, after several years of disputes, by annulling its governing bodies and appointing a provisional Sovereign Council.
In a decree published by the Vatican, the pope announced that he had promulgated the “new Constitutional Charter” of the Order and that it would “come into force immediately.”
Francis decided to “remove all high positions, dissolve the current Sovereign Council and constitute a provisional Sovereign Council”, whose 13 members he personally appointed.
The provisional Sovereign Council must organize an extraordinary General Chapter (Assembly) for January in order to execute the decisions of the pope, the decree said.
The Order of Malta, founded in Jerusalem and recognized by the pope in 1113, is at once an unusual landless state headquartered in Rome, a religious order, and a powerful charitable organization.
It currently has 13,500 knights, including about fifty religious, who take care of the Hospitaller and humanitarian work of the Order with more than 100,000 employees or volunteers in 120 countries.
The crisis within the Order and in its relations with the Vatican begins with a dispute at the top of the Order in 2016 when the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, who is its head, asks the Grand Chancellor to resign.
Some knights of the Order object and ask the pope to intervene. Francis sends a commission of inquiry and obtains the resignation of the Grand Master, whose decisions are annulled, according to the religious information site Korazym.
The pope also names a “pontifical delegate,” his personal representative to the Order, and begins work on a broad reform of the Order’s Constitutional Charter.
The debates were difficult on the sovereignty of the Order of Malta.
The draft reform of the Constitutional Charter prepared by the papal delegate foresees that the Order of Malta is “a matter of the Holy See”, which the knights reject, fearing that the Order will be reduced to “an association of religious”, according to Korazym.
In his decree, the pope recalls a 1953 decision by a Court of Cardinals according to which “the prerogatives of the Order (…) do not constitute that set of prerogatives and powers proper to sovereign states.”
“Being a religious order, it depends … then on the Holy See,” Francis said.
