Simon Caldwell meets the ruffled order’s new Grand Hospitaller keen to build on its legacy.
In June last year, Pope Francis seized control of the Sovereign Order of Malta in what was effectively a coup. Frustrated that his reforms had reached an impasse amid resistance from knights who feared the Vatican would strip the 900-year-old order of its sovereignty, the Pontiff took the reins of power fully from the moment Fra’ Marco Luzzago, the Lieutenant of the Grand Master, died unexpectedly that same month.
Reforms ensued with the speed and force of an express train. Fra’ John Dunlap, a Canadian-born New York lawyer, was sworn in as Fra’ Marco’s successor on the day of his funeral, and by September the Pope unveiled a new constitution, making clear that “the time has come to complete the renewal process that has been initiated”.
Besides naming a new interim leader, the Pope also appointed Fra’ Alessandro de Franciscis, a Naples-born and Harvard-educated paediatrician and epidemiologist, as the new Grand Hospitaller. It is an office which carries enormous responsibility for work in health, social affairs and humanitarian action along with international cooperation and the coordination and supervision of the charitable initiatives of the grand priories, national associations and other institutions worldwide, ensuring always that “Christian principles of care and human dignity are respected”.
Fra’ Alessandro is a man of great experience and competence, having formerly served as the first non-French permanent doctor and president of the Lourdes Bureau des Constatations Médicales, the organisation that investigates alleged miraculous healings at the Marian shrine in France.
Yet given that he swore solemn vows only in December 2017, his role as grand hospitaller could be seen as a big responsibility for one so new.
In the short time he has spent in the order, he has known only crisis, for it was in 2017 that Pope Francis, angered by the forced resignation of Fra’ Albrecht von Boeselager, the grand chancellor, by the late grand master, Fra’ Matthew Festing, a Briton, over the inclusion of condoms as part of the order’s humanitarian relief efforts in Africa, first demanded reforms.
It remains to be seen whether reducing the order to a “subject” of the Holy See, spelling the loss of its sovereign status in international law, will carry adverse consequences, yet what Fra’ Alessandro seems to offer to his fellow knights is hope.
To meet him today is to encounter a man of serenity and joy, whose warm and charming smile barely conceals his steely sense of purpose.
The knights clearly have great confidence in him because at an extraordinary general chapter in January they elected him to serve a six-year term. They have shown the same confidence in Fra’ John Dunlap, who last month was elected as Grand Master for a ten-year term by an absolute majority of the order’s Council Complete of State.
The appointment of the Grand Master came as a consequence of papal reforms because previously such a figure would have been drawn only from knights of noble lineage who would serve for life instead of a fixed period.
His acceptance appears to indicate that the world’s oldest Christian charity is now accepting change without complaint, putting five years of uncertainty behind it and looking outwards again as it repositions itself to confront the challenges of the modern world.
So what next for an organisation which employs some 45,000 staff, is assisted by almost 100,000 volunteers, and which boasts a humanitarian projects budget said to amount to $2.3 billion?
The humanitarian disaster unfolding from the war between Ukraine and Russia is an “endless crisis”, says Fra’ Alessandro during a visit to London to attend the annual International Hospitallers Conference, which is demanding a continuous response.
Yet the same time, “we have to invoke from the Holy Spirt the gift of the imagination because we cannot go on always doing the same things,” he says. “The times we are living in are pushing us to new challenges – for instance, the pandemics. The average middle-class citizen of the world three years ago thought that infectious diseases were conquered forever. That is not true at all. Who knows what will happen in three years’ time?”
Another challenge which Fra’ Alessandro believes the order should confront is that presented by euthanasia and abortion, areas where he believes the order could offer an exemplary pastoral response.
“I am fiercely and consistently and openly against abortion,” he explains. “The question is: have any of these people who are picketing against abortion then welcomed the girls who don’t want an abortion?
“It is starting to happen, where members of our order and with women associated with our order, particularly in the United States, that they are starting to organise and offer shelter – homes, in a way.
“I have seen the same phenomenon in the Holy Land where we have a beautiful institution, the Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem, where by mid-January we had delivered 100,000 babies, mostly the children of Muslim mothers.
“We also give protection to young girls who have often been violated by their brothers or someone else in the family and the minute after they want to kick them out or kill them because they are the living proof that they have been violated.
“I think that if we are faithful to our vocation we will be gifting of always seeing what new things can be done without just [rubber] stamping what has been done before,” he continues.
“This is what I see in the future. I see new forms of being close to the sick and the poor. I see the strengthening of our international bonds and I think that we will be a bit forced by events to discover the reforms the Pope promulgated… starting with me.”
He wants to attract “younger energies”. At present, depending on the country in question, he explains, access to joining the order can depend upon nobility, and age (in England knights and dames must be over the age of 35) and often also upon wealth, with some American regional divisions requiring a four or five-figure fee from candidates before they can enrol. It means most knights and dames are elderly.
“I remember Fra’ Matthew Festing, to whom I owe my vocation, crying out at the end of the international congress in Rhodes that there were 13,500 knights and dames in the world but that the median age was 67.2,” he recalls. “That is my age today. We are not competitive.”
The order in some countries is much older, he notes, citing Brazil, where the median age of a knight is 78, and the Philippines, where it is 80.
“It is not good,” says Fra’ Alessandro. “We have to gently and kindly and charitably and as Christians go further. We need young energies.
“In the Middle Ages, people would become a knight only if they were young. Nobody would become a knight in armour and ride on a horse and fight the enemy at the age of 67.”
“I am very optimistic,” he continues. “I see a lot of interest. It is going to take time. What I have seen is that there is a terrific attraction of young people to the uniform and the ethos and the eight-pointed cross and the blue lights of our ambulances.
“People recognise in us a trustworthy institution in helping others. These are the people we have to welcome.”
He speaks with hope and vision and it is difficult to resist the conclusion that there is every possibility that with men like him at the helm, this ancient order will find the imagination and vigour necessary to guarantee its existence for many years to come.
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