ROME
Crux
Nicole Winfield January 27, 2017
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROME – The Knights of Malta is still insisting on its sovereignty in its showdown with the Vatican, even after Pope Francis effectively took control of the ancient religious order and announced a papal delegate would govern it through a “process of renewal.”
The Knights’ current grand master, Fra’ Matthew Festing, was at work Friday at the order’s swanky Rome palazzo near the Spanish Steps, pending a meeting of his governing council to either accept or reject his resignation.
The Saturday meeting is no rubber-stamp formality: It’s evidence of the order’s sovereign status under international law, which is recognized by the more than 100 countries that have diplomatic relations with the Knights of Malta and essentially consider it a state.
Festing, a 67-year-old British aristocrat, met Tuesday with Francis and said he would resign after he lost an internal power struggle that started with a scandal over condoms. Festing sacked the Knights’ foreign minister, Albrecht von Boeselager, over the condom scandal.
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