Pope Francis has issued a new constitution for the Order of Malta, appointing a provisional Sovereign Council as part of an ongoing renewal process. The Decree issued at the weekend establishes the new Constitutional Charter and related Melitense Code of the Order, with revocation of the High Offices, and dissolution of the current Sovereign Council, while calling for an Extraordinary Chapter General in January 2023. Pope Francis said the Order has “always enjoyed special protection from the Apostolic See,” and that various popes have “acted to affirm the identity, to maintain operations, to help overcome crises, as well as to guarantee the existence and development” of the Order, including in its rights of sovereignty in the international sphere.
The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, was founded nearly 1,000 years ago to provide medical aid for pilgrims. It has a multi-million-dollar budget, over 13,000 members, 95,000 volunteers and 52,000 medical staff running refugee camps, disaster relief programs and clinics around the world. The Pope recalled how the prerogatives of the Order do not constitute the set of powers and prerogatives proper to sovereign entities “in the full sense of the word,” as stipulated in the 24 January 1953 ruling issued by the Tribunal of Cardinals. As a religious Order, therefore, it “depends in its various forms, on the Holy See.”
This comes after five years of acrimonious debate over a new constitution which some feared would weaken the Order’s sovereignty. The Order is recognised as a sovereign entity with its own passports and licence plates, and has diplomatic relations with 110 states. While Cardinal Silvano Tomasi, the Pope’s special delegate to the Order, said the new constitution would not weaken its international sovereignty, it had to remain under the auspices of the Vatican, according to Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a member of the working group which prepared the new constitution. Under the previous constitution, the top knights and the Grand Master were required to have noble lineage. Reformers will welcome the fact the new constitution eliminates this rule as well as the tradition of Grand Masters being elected for life. Pope Francis already gave Tomasi new powers to change the knights’ internal governance, despite concerns this could violate the Order’s sovereign status.
As Ed Condon argued back in 2017 – with particular criticism for Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a man who has perhaps undermined his chances of becoming pope thanks to his role in the Vatican-China deal – the Vatican Secretary of State had “announced that a commission to investigate the dismissal of the Order’s Grand Chancellor will go ahead. He has said, according to recent leaks, that the Order is a “lay religious Order” which is to be of “service to the faith and to the Holy Father”. Therefore, he is alleged to have reasoned, the Holy See has the authority to intervene in the Order’s internal governance.”
According to Condon, while the Order is religious, “it is made explicitly clear that the obligations of religious obedience do not travel outside the hierarchy of the Order”, something “detailed in the section of the Order’s constitution which treats its relationship with the Holy See.” In essence, while “the Order is Catholic, its constitution clearly separates it from the oversight of any Vatican department.” Of course, Pope Francis has now acted to bring about a new constitution, although Condon had argued that should the Pope “expressly abrogate the Order’s constitution”, it would not be “clear what the consequences would be internationally and diplomatically”, since in “undermining the sovereignty of another entity, the Secretariat of State’s intervention could have serious diplomatic repercussions for the Holy See.”
Condon drew a comparison 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.” This could, for instance, have implications for the Vatican Bank.
There are whispers that tensions between Pope Francis and Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke – a possible dark horse candidate for the papacy and patron of the Order – have catalysed much of this saga. This would not be the first time that the Pope had intervened against a perceived critic, having done so with Cardinal Robert Sarah when the latter invited priests to celebrate Mass facing east, and was publicly rebuked. On the other hand, a series of misunderstandings may explain the whole episode. Nevertheless, the saga has served to harden many attitudes against Francis, while perhaps opening up risks to the sovereignty of the Holy See, and having perhaps further weakened the authority and undermined the future of Cardinal Parolin. A line may have been drawn under these hostilities but we are left with a bitter aftertaste.
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