Pope Francis devoted no less than two hours of his time to moving forward on the question of the reform of an institution born in Jerusalem nine hundred years ago. The only aside during the conference: the telephone exchange between the sovereign pontiff and the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
The result of this meeting filtered through a letter distributed to senior officials of the Order, which was echoed in the religious press. The president of the Lebanese branch of the knights, Marwan Sehnaoui, who replaces the grand chancellor, Albercht von Boeselager in the negotiation of the reforms to come, explained that each party present had presented to the pope its own vision of the reform.
“After the exchange of views,” added Marwan Sehnaoui, “the Holy Father said that there was no urgency to make a final decision,” wishing to collect additional information before a probable second session of work at the end of which he would decide on his own.
In another letter to the Knights on February 26, Cardinal Silvano Tomasi, the Pope’s special delegate to the Order, said he had presented Francis with his own proposals for reform with the aim of “maintaining and better frame the institution in its characteristic as a lay religious order, and allow the continuation of its charitable, diplomatic, and humanitarian action, in the service of the Church.”
At the center of the dispute that had arisen for several months between the Grand Magisterium of the Order and the advisers of Cardinal Tomasi, was the circulation of a draft constitution which would have made the Order an explicit “subject” of the Holy See.
With the question of the maintenance of the sovereignty of the Order having been resolved, the main point of contention now lies in the role that the first class knights – the Fras, who take religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience – will play in the governance of the Order in the future.
These form an aristocracy so tightly recruited that there are currently only 34 professed knights, while the “knights and ladies” number 13,500.
These lay people, often fathers and mothers of engaged families, believe that the future of the Order cannot do without these knights, on the pretext that the vocations of the “professed” are too few, and that the management of a humanitarian work spread over the five continents requires an expertise that goes beyond the skills of the professed alone.
On the side of the Holy See, the preference would go towards a reinforcement of the religious identity of the Order, via a widening of the recruitment of the professed: but a greater share given to religious would mean – criticize the laity – a more direct dependence on the Holy See and therefore a lessening of the sovereignty of the Order.
On the lay side, whose objections are echoed by the German branch of the Knights, it is proposed that the Fras should have a more ceremonial role in the higher leadership positions of the Order, with the power of day-to-day government transferred to the second class of knights.
A vision that supporters of an increased role for the Fras denounce as leading to a “Catholic in name only” institution, where there would be more room for compromise on issues such as contraception and abortion. For the record, the Order’s crisis took a dramatic turn in 2017, when Grand Chancellor von Boeselager was accused of allowing the sale of contraceptives, which he has always denied.
A next working meeting should be held in Rome at the end of March, in the presence of a Roman pontiff who is determined to cut the Gordian knot alone.
Pope Francis met with representatives of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Cardinal Silvano Tomasi, his special delegate to the Knights, to discuss the Order’s constitutional reform proposals. Their visions seem to clash.