VATICAN CORNER
Residents of Rome awoke Saturday February 4, 2017 to find dozens of posters on the walls of their city showing a scowling Pope Francis. The posters read “Ah Francis, you’ve taken over congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals …but where’s your mercy?” Workers quickly covered over the posters and Italian police searched security camera footage for the culprits. However, no group claimed responsibility, and there were few leads, although it is likely that a conservative faction of the Catholic Church was involved. Critics of the Pope’s removal of the grand master of the ancient Order of the Knights of Malta and the appointment of his special delegate to that Order have angered some and they may be behind the posters. The Knights of Malta is a Roman Catholic lay religious order and the present-day continuation of the medieval Knights Hospitaller, founded about the year 1048 to provide medical care for pilgrims to the Holy Land. They constructed a church, convent and hospital in Jerusalem. However during the First Crusade, after the loss of Jerusalem to the medieval realm Mamluk Sultanate in about the year 1099, the Knights Hospitaller became a military order. They added to their tasks the defense of the Christian sick and pilgrims from Islamic persecution. They also began protecting the territories that the crusaders had captured from the Muslims. The Order was recognized as soverign in 1113 by Pope Paschal II, putting it under the protection of the Holy See, and granting it the right to freely elect its superiors without interference from other secular or religious authorities. The Knights had lives that were religious, chivalrous, and noble and they were bound by their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The Order adopted the white eight-pointed Cross after the eight “beatitudes” Jesus pronounced in his Sermon on the Mount, and it is still their symbol today. The Order eventually became an important naval power in the eastern Mediterranean. In 1530 they gained control of the strategic island of Malta located between the Christian and Muslim worlds and where pirate activities threatened trade. The Order spent centuries on Malta and became known as the “Order of Malta” or the “Knights of Malta”. Today the Order is headquartered in Rome and has 13,500 Knights, Dames, and auxiliary members, employing about 25,000 doctors, nurses, auxiliaries and paramedics assisted by 80,000 volunteers in more than 120 countries. Traditionally, European nobility has made up the small ruling leadership of the Knights. Leaked lists of their supposed membership read like a Who’s Who of the global establishment. Former U.S. first president George Bush has appeared on such a supposed membership list. To be continued.
Sources: foxnews.com, knightsofmalta.com, independent.co.uk, cruxnow.com