John Dunlap, a Canadian lawyer, was yesterday elected as the 81st Grand Master of the Order of Malta, the first Professed Knight from the Americas to be elected to the role.
Dunlap, 66, from Ottawa, Canada, becomes the 81st Grand Master in the nearly 1,000-year history of the group which is formally known as Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta.
Dunlap was elected in the Magistral Villa in Rome, one of the two institutional seats of the Order of Malta, by the Council Complete of State, the elective body, by an absolute majority of votes. There were 99 voters from 18 different countries.
The Grand Master is the head of the Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Catholic Church and at the same time a subject of international law. It was founded in Jerusalem in 1048 to provide medical aid for pilgrims in the Holy Land.
Today, the order has a multi-million dollar budget, 13,500 members, 95,000 volunteers and 52,000 medical staff running refugee camps, drug treatment centres, disaster relief and clinics around the world. It has been very active in helping Ukrainian refugees and war victims.
Dunlap communicated his election to Pope Francis with a letter written in his own hand, and was sworn in yesterday at 6.30 pm in the presence of Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi, the Pope’s Special Delegate, in the Church of St. Mary on the Aventine.
Dunlap, who held the position of Lieutenant of the Grand Master at the moment of his election, joined the order in 1996 and became what is known as a professed knight in 2008. He is the first Grand Master in the order’s history not to be elected for life and the first non-aristocratic Grand Master to have been elected.
According to Article 13 of the Order of Malta’s new constitution, issued by Pope Francis in September 2022 not without controversy, the new grand master will remain in office for 10 years and does not have to be of noble birth.
Dunlap, addressing the members of the Council Complete of State, said: “I accept this office with a profound spirit of service and with the solemn promise of a constant commitment.
“I thank each of you for having placed your trust in me and for having shown your great love for, and dedication to, our Order by your presence here today.
“There are many challenges that await us, but united in the awareness of our mission of Tuitio Fidei et Obsequium Pauperum (witnessing the faith, helping the poor), I am sure that we will be able to face them together united and cohesively, in the same spirit that guided Blessed Gerard, founder of the Order over 900 years ago.”
Born in Ottawa, Canada, on 16 April 1957, after studying in Nice University, John Dunlap graduated from the University of Ottawa and then obtained a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Western Ontario. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in Public Service by John Cabot University in Rome.
Dunlap is a member of the New York State Bar and the Ontario Bar Association in Canada. In 1986, he joined the New York legal firm Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller in New York City, becoming a partner in 1993, specialising in corporate and immigration law. An internationally respected lawyer, since 1997 he has been legal adviser to the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations.
Dunlap approached the Order of Malta and found his religious vocation in the mid-1980s during his volunteer work with patients suffering from AIDS and other diseases at the Cardinal Cooke Medical Center in Harlem (New York). He has volunteered in that hospital every week for the past 30 years.
Admitted to the Order of Malta in 1996, he took his solemn vows as a Professed Knight in 2008. For over a decade he has served the Order of Malta as chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Names and Emblems and representative to the Alliance of the Orders of St John.
In 2009 Dunlap was elected for a five-year term as a member of the Sovereign Council. He was re-elected for another five-year term by the Chapter General in 2014 and then in 2019. He was appointed Lieutenant of the Grand Master in June 2022, following the death of the last Grand Master Fra’ Marco Luzzago.
His appointment comes after a difficult period of internal upheaval for the Order of Malta. Last September, Pope Francis dissolved the order’s leadership and installed a provisional government following the death of Fra’ Marco Luzzago.
The pontiff is said to have moved in an attempt to end five years of often acrimonious debate over a new constitution which some feared would weaken the Order’s sovereignty.
Critics of the pope’s actions say he had no right to interfere in the Order of Malta’s internal affairs since its constitution at the time clearly separated it from the oversight of any Vatican department.
Canon lawyer Ed Condon drew a comparison at the time with Italy’s relationship to the Holy See, arguing that: “The disregard for the mutually sovereign relationship between the Holy See and the Order sets a precedent in international law, which will now lurk under the Secretariat of State’s dealings with other governments like an unexploded bomb.
“If the Holy See can so brazenly insert itself into the internal governance of another sovereign entity whose legitimacy stems from a mutual agreement under international law, it now has no legal defence should another sovereign body, say the government of the Italian Republic, choose to view the independence of the Holy See as a similarly anachronistic formality.”
The new constitution and the election of Fra’ Dunlop has been seen a win for reformers, backed by the Vatican, who had sought a more transparent government to bring in fresh blood and allow the order to better respond to its recent massive growth.
(Photo of Fra’ Dunlap courtesy of the Order of Malta)
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