Pope Francis has a right to probe Order of Malta

The Order of Malta, the most ancient of Roman Orders composed of lay people, has told Pope Francis that his decision to investigate its ouster of a top official over a years-old scandal is “unacceptable.”

Is this legal – the insubordination of the Knights of the Order of Malta in rebuking a pontifical decision because the dismissal was an act of internal governmental administration of the Order, which is sovereign? Does the Vatican lack the legitimate competence to intervene?

Pope Francis has appointed a five-member commission to investigate the Dec. 8 removal of Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager amid suggestions that Francis’s own envoy to the group, the conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke, helped engineer it without the Pope’s blessing. Cardinal Burke has emerged as one of Francis’ top critics and is a hardliner on enforcing Church teaching on sexual morals.

The Order of Malta has many trappings of a sovereign state, issuing its own stamps, passports and licence plates, and holding diplomatic relations with 106 states, the Holy See included. The Holy See, however, has a unique relationship with the Order since the Pope appoints a cardinal to “promote the spiritual interests” of the Order and its relationship with the Vatican. Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Burke to that position in 2014.

Kurt Martens, a professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., says the matter of the Pope’s investigation is complicated given the sovereign nature of both the Order and the Holy See under international law.

Theologically, however, all Catholics are to submit to the Sovereign Pontiff in questions of faith and morals. I understand that the Pope does not interfere in matters of the Order of Malta concerning the issuing of stamps, passports or licence plates. But the charge against the Grand Chancellor concerns a program in which the Order’s international aid group worked with other aid groups to help sex slaves in Myanmar by distributing condoms to protect them from HIV infection.

Church teaching bars the use of artificial contraception, and von Boeselager said that as soon as the Order’s headquarters in Rome learned of the condom distribution, two of the projects were immediately halted. A third continued so as not to deprive a poor region of Myanmar of all basic medical services. The project eventually ended after the Vatican’s doctrine office intervened.

Von Boeselager has said he was asked, and then ordered to resign, Dec. 6, 2016, during a meeting with Cardinal Burke and the Order’s leader, who suggested that the resignation was “in accordance with the wishes of the Holy See.”

In its statement, the Knights of Malta said the Pope’s decision to appoint a commission to investigate von Boeselager’s replacement was a result of a misunderstanding with the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.

This is what the Holy Father wants investigated, and he has every right to do so since the Knights are a Catholic order. As Kurt Martens said, “It makes sense that you ask members” because they are familiar with the Order.

The Knights trace their history to the 11th-century Crusades with the establishment of an infirmary in Jerusalem that cared for people of all faiths. The Order now counts 13,500 members and 100,000 staff and volunteers who provide health care in hospitals and clinics around the world.

The Order was founded and confirmed by Pope Paschal II in 1113. It acquired territory and revenues through the kingdom of Jerusalem and beyond. Even as it survived on Malta, the Order lost many of its European holdings during the Protestant Reformation. The property of the English branch was confiscated in 1540. The German Bailiwick of Brandenburg became Lutheran in 1577, then more broadly Evangelical, but continued to pay its financial contribution to the Order until 1812, when the Protector of the Order in Prussia, King Frederick William III, turned it into an Order of Merit.

The French Revolutionary Government seized the assets and properties of the Order in France in 1792.

On June 4, 2008, Canada and the Order of Malta established official relations with the Sovereign Military Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, with the exchange of letters between the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Order’s Grand Master.

The Constitution of the Order of Malta states: “In the conduct of relations with the Apostolic See, the acquired rights, customs and privileges granted to the Order are in force, unless expressly abrogated” (Art.4, para 4).

All Catholics are subjects of the Sovereign Pontiff, and it is through his help and encouragement that the Order has survived. And yet members of the Order have irreverently rebuked the Pope’s decision and want him to stay out of their internal affairs.