February 18, 2008   •   VOL. 46, NO. 4   •   Oakland, CA

Order of Malta, chivalry in work of charity
 

The white eight-pointed cross used to designate the Order of Malta is rich in history and tradition. The four arms of the modern white cross represent the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. The eight points, which stem from the four arms, represent the qualities of resourcefulness, explicitness, dexterity, discrimination, sympathy, perseverance, observation, and tact.

By Monica Clark, Voice editor,
and Greg Erlandson
Catholic News Service

When the new Order of Malta Medical Clinic opens later this year at the Cathedral of Christ the Light complex in Oakland, it will follow a centuries-old tradition of care for the sick and needy.

The Order, which traces it roots to 11th-century Palestine, was founded during the First Crusade by Blessed Gerard, a monk who ran a hospital in Jerusalem for pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. Today it is the world’s most ancient chivalric order and the world’s smallest sovereign state.

At first, the order was solely religious in character. But Blessed Gerard’s successors saw the need to protect pilgrims and defend the newly conquered Holy Land from Moslem counterattacks, so it became a military order in the 12th century.

Recruiting members, usually noblemen, from throughout Christian Europe, the knights provided hospices and infirmaries for pilgrims and manned military fortifications in the southern Mediterranean against Islam’s armies. Over the course of centuries, the order was driven by Muslim armies first from Jerusalem, then Rhodes, Greece, and finally from Malta by Napoleon.

Fra Andrew W.N. Bertie died in Rome on Feb. 7. He was the first Englishman to be elected to the post of grand master in the Order of Malta’s 900-year history. CNS FILE PHOTO/ALBERTO PIZZOLI/REUTERS

Today the order’s official title is the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, and its symbol is the eight-pointed Maltese cross.

Its 12,500 members include friars who have professed the three vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience, as well as lay members who commit themselves to Christian virtue and charitable works of mercy.

The professed friars, known as Knights of Justice, must be able to prove their noble bloodlines. From them is chosen the order’s grand master.

A second class within the order consists of the Knights of Obedience, who also must be of noble lineage and who are the equivalent of a religious third order.

The third class consists of lay members and honorary chaplains divided into various grades, including Knights and Dames of Honor and Devotion, Knights and Dames of Grace and Devotion, and Knights and Dames of Magistral Grace, known in the United States as master knights. Within each class of membership there are numerous distinctions, each with a different iconic decoration (medal).There are 12,500 members worldwide. Women were admitted to its leadership ranks for the first time in 1998.

Today the order, which has diplomatic relations with 99 countries, carries out its charitiable work in more than 120 countries.

Its property, which enjoys extraterritorial status similar to the Vatican, consists of a palace on Rome’s chic Via Condotti, just down the street from Gucci’s, and a villa on the Aventine Hill a few miles to the south.

The villa’s front gate is a popular stop for tourists, who can spy the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica across town by peering through its keyhole.

Three organizations for the Knights and Dames of Malta exist in the United States, one of them is the Western Association, headquartered in San Francisco.
As a religious order, the Knights of Malta are historically tied to the Holy See, and the pope is technically the order’s superior.

Elected for life and subject to the approval of the pope, the grand master was invested with the title of prince in 1607 and has a rank equal to that of cardinal, thanks to a decree by Pope Urban VIII in 1630. Today, that means little more than that he can be addressed as “eminence.’’

Fra Andrew Willoughby Ninina Bertie, who was elected the order’s 78th grand master in 1988, died Feb. 7 at the age of 78. He was a judo black belt and former fencer who served in the Scots Guards from 1948-1950, then taught French and Spanish at a Benedictine high school in Sussex for 23 years. He joined the order in 1956, then took perpetual vows and from 1981 until his election as grand master, was a member of the order’s Sovereign Council.

If the honorific titles and the red tunics, golden swords and spurs of the Knights’ dress uniforms strike some as hopelessly antiquated, the order’s charitable goals are demanding and contemporary.

Today the Knights and some 80,000 volunteers run leprosariums throughout Africa and Asia, and hospitals, nursing schools, centers for the elderly and disabled around the world. They also aid the socially isolated, the victims of persecution, and refugees, regardless of race or religious faith.

For example, in Africa, they serve people suffering from leprosy, HIV/AIDS, famine, and civil wars. In Southeast Asia, they have reached out to victims of the 2004 tsunami. They also help the victims of war in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

The Knights see their modern aid effort as a logical expression of their chivalric code to serve Christ and the less fortunate.

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