KNIGHTS OF MALTA AT CENTRE OF PAPAL ROW
VATICAN CITY • The Vatican announced Wednesday it was taking over the embattled Knights of Malta in an extraordinary display of papal power after the leader of the sovereign lay Catholic order publicly defied Pope Francis in a dispute over condoms.
The move is remarkable — and controversial — because it marks the intervention of one sovereign state, the Holy See, into the internal governing affairs of another, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, an ancient aristocratic order that runs a vast charity operation around the globe.
The Vatican said Matthew Festing, 67, offered to resign as the Knights’ grand master on Tuesday during an audience with the pope, and that Francis had accepted it on Wednesday.
Festing had refused to cooperate with a papal commission investigating his decision to oust the order’s grand chancellor, Albrecht von Boeselager, over revelations that the Knights’ charity branch had distributed condoms under Boeselager’s watch.
Festing had cited the Knights’ status as a sovereign entity in refusing to co-operate with the pope’s investigation. Many canon lawyers had backed him up, questioning the pope’s right to intervene in what was essentially an act of internal governance.
The Order of Malta has many trappings of a sovereign state, issuing its own stamps, passports and licence plates.
On Dec. 6, Festing first asked, then demanded Boeselager’s resignation. Boeselager refused, but was ousted two days later under a disciplinary procedure he contends violated the order’s own rules.
Boeselager had been the Knights’ health minister when its charity branch Malteser International was found to have been involved in programs that distributed thousands of condoms to poor people in Myanmar. Church teaching forbids artificial contraception.