Category talk:Knights of Malta

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The present Prince and Grand Master is His Most Eminent Highness Fra' Matthew Festing OBE TD DL, an English gentleman of old Catholic recusant family. Fra' Matthew is a former Grenadier Guards Officer, a retired Colonel in the British Territorial Army, former Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Northhumbria, and a representative for Sothebys, the international auctioneers. His father, Field Marshal Sir Francis Festing GCB KBE DSO, was the last but one Chief of the Imperial General Staff of the British Empire.

As Grand Master he must come from the ranks of the Knights of Justice. They are the original Knights and take the 3 vows of religion, poverty, chastity and obedience, as monks do, and as a sign of their full and radical commitment to the Christian Gospel. They are, accordingly religious Knights. They are not priests. They are religious brothers in vows, recognised as such by the Roman Catholic Church, and their religious superior is the Grand Master, in a similar way that an Abbot is the religious superior of an Abbey. Knights, donats, priests and chaplains of the Order take their place according to their rank in the Order under the Grand Master.

In this way they represent a genuine, modern continuation of that more ancient idea of religious life from which all ancient orders of religion and chivalry grew (for instance the Order of the Garter was originally founded upon a similarly religious idea). The Knights of Justice are styled "Fra'" which is short for the Latin Frater meaning "Brother".

The full title of the Order is the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta. The Order is a Roman Catholic hospitaller order of chivalry in which Catholic royalty and members of the Catholic nobility, as well as members of leading non-noble families, serve and defend the sick-poor (service called, in Latin, Obsequium Pauperum) and defend the Catholic Faith (service called, in Latin, Tuitio Fidei).

Their vocation represents the highest ideal of Christian service by which royalty, nobility and gentry serve the sick and the poor as if the sick and poor were their lords and masters. Hence the Knights always called them, in French, Nos Seigneurs Malades, or, "Our Lords the Sick". Churches of the Order frequently bear, on their facades, the motto: Servi Dominorum Pauperum Infirmorum, "Servants of Our Lords the Sick Poor". This represents the highest, best and most ancient ideals of nobility, chivalry and Christianity.

The Knights Hospitaller were founded in 1099 and established and recognised by a Bull of Pope Paschal II, to care for and protect the sick-poor in the pilgrim Hospital of Jerusalem and to defend the Holy Land and, later, the boundaries of Christendom, from attack. After the Fall of Acre they removed to Rhodes and thence to Malta, a gift of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Today, it retains its chivalric character in a modern context through its hospitaller vocation, still serving "Our Lords the sick-poor".

The Order of Malta is also a sovereign order which means that it is its own state, has international diplomatic status, issues it own passports, stamps and currency, and has sovereign diplomatic territory of its own (curently the Palazzo di Malta in Rome). Whilst in former times that enabled them to be free to defend Christian Europe, today this enables the Order to remain neutral in conflicts so that it can provide humanitarian aid in even the most difficult of situations. Ancient military chivalry now turns to the modern chivalry of aid and succour to those in suffering round the globe.

On the continent of Europe the Order also runs a medical and nursing voluntary service of the sort which, in Britain, is run by the St John Ambulance Brigade.

The Order is thus an exclusively Roman Catholic order.

That is not to say that other Orders based upon the Knights of St John are not achieving a good work - they often are. Among these are the Protestant Orders of St John in England, Germany and Scandinavia. Like the Order of Malta they are charitable organisations as well as orders of chivalry and do a great deal of good charitable and hospitaller work.

Exit2DOS2000  •T•C•  04:30, 5 December 2008 (UTC)