After six years of struggling with the motley foils, Francis had just dealt a fatal blow to the Knights of Malta, who resisted his desire for fundamental reform, and which he eventually imposed with an authoritarian regime that was very visible in Rome.
As of last Saturday, the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, its official title, appears to be no longer so “sovereign” as Francis has objectively anointed its current leadership to form an interim government. 53-year-old Frenchman Emmanuel Rousseau becomes the great commander. The Pope also established a new statute, defining this institution first and foremost as a “the religious order, in its various expressions, depends on the Holy See.”
Herein lay the crux of the debate within this ancient institution. Born in 1048, a venerable lady with the Knights Hospitallers of Jerusalem, which became a humanitarian organization…
Source: Le Figaro
