VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis will name his own man to run the Knights of Malta temporarily after the head of the ancient chivalric and charity institution resigned in the climax of a bitter dispute over sovereignty with the Vatican.

FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis (R) meets Robert Matthew Festing, Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta during a private audience at the Vatican June 23, 2016. REUTERS/Gabriel Bouys/Pool/File Photo

The pope asked Grand Master Matthew Festing, 67, to step down at a meeting on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Rome-based Catholic institution said. Grand masters usually rule for life.

Festing and the Vatican had been locked in a dispute since the Knights’ Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager was sacked in December in the chivalric equivalent of a boardroom showdown - ostensibly for allowing the use of condoms in a medical project for the poor.

The two-month battle of wills reflected broader opposition inside the Roman Catholic Church to Francis’s efforts to modernize the Holy See and gently unravel the legacy of his conservative predecessors.

The Vatican, which is a sovereign state, said the pope would name a “pontifical delegate” to run the group, which also enjoys sovereign status and is recognized by about 100 countries.

Vatican sources said this was a temporary solution until the Knights were in a position to elect their own leader again.

The move was similar to one in 1983 when the Pope John Paul II named a delegate to temporarily run the Jesuit order, which he feared was becoming too leftist. More recently, the Vatican named a delegate to run the conservative Legionaries of Christ, which has hit by a sexual abuse scandal.

The Knights’ top governing body, the Sovereign Council, was convened for Saturday to take stock of the crisis.

When the dispute broke out, von Boeselager appealed to the pope, who appointed a commission to investigate. Festing, a Briton, refused to cooperate, saying that violated the order’s sovereignty.

CONDOM CONTROVERSY

Some insiders said the push against von Boeselager was an excuse by Festing and arch-conservative American Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, the order’s patron, to increase their power.

Burke, who was demoted from a top Vatican job in 2014, is one of four cardinals who have made a rare public challenge to Francis, accusing him of sowing confusion on moral issues.

The all-male top leaders of the Knights of Malta are not clerics but take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the pope. The institution has 13,500 members, 25,000 employees and 80,000 volunteers worldwide.

The order was formed in the 11th century to provide protection and medical care for pilgrims to the Holy Land.

When Festing fired von Boeselager, he accused the German of hiding the fact that he allowed the use of condoms when he ran Malteser International, the order’s humanitarian aid agency.

The church does not allow condoms as a means of birth control and says abstinence and monogamy in heterosexual marriage is the best way to stop the spread of AIDS.

Von Boeselager said he closed two projects in the developing world when he discovered condoms were being distributed but kept a third running for a while because closing it would have abruptly ended all basic medical services to poor people. </s> VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has defrocked the Chilean priest at the center of the global sex abuse scandal rocking his papacy, invoking his "supreme" authority to stiffen a sentence originally handed down by a Vatican court in 2011. In a statement Friday, the Vatican said Francis had laicized the 88-year-old Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was originally sanctioned to live a lifetime of "penance and prayer" for having sexually abused minors in the upscale Santiago parish he ran.

The "penance and prayer" sanction has been the Vatican's punishment of choice for elderly priests convicted of raping and molesting children. It has long been criticized by victims as too soft and essentially an all-expenses-paid retirement.

The Vatican didn't say what new evidence, if any, prompted Francis to re-evaluate Karadima's sanction and impose what clergy consider to be the equivalent of a death sentence. It said Francis made the "exceptional decision" for the good of the church, and cited the church canon that lays out the pope's "supreme, full, immediate and universal power" to serve the church.

The statement said the decree, signed Thursday, takes effect immediately and that Karadima was informed of it Friday.

The decision appeared aimed at showing a get-tough approach to sex abuse after a series of missteps by Francis and accusations by a former Vatican ambassador that Francis had rehabilitated a now-disgraced former American cardinal early on in his papacy.

Earlier this month, some of the highest ranking Catholic leaders from the U.S. met with Pope Francis to discuss the priest abuse scandal. At the time, U.S. bishops said Pope Francis "listened deeply from the heart" but they offered few details and no "next steps" in how the church planned to deal with abuse.

While the move to defrock Karadima will be welcomed by Chilean victims as overdue, the decision could spark a religious debate for those who see it as a second punishment for the same crime. Francis' conservative critics might also bristle at another display of raw papal power from the Argentine Jesuit.

Francis sparked a crisis in his papacy earlier this year when he strongly defended one of Karadima's proteges, Bishop Juan Barros, against accusations that he had witnessed Karadima's abuse and ignored it.

Francis had claimed that the accusations against Barros were "calumny" and politically motivated, and he defended his 2015 decision to appoint Barros bishop of a small Chilean diocese over the objections of the faithful and many in the Chilean hierarchy.

After realizing that something was amiss, Francis ordered a Vatican investigation that uncovered decades of abuse and cover-ups by the Chilean church leadership. Francis apologized to the victims and set about making amends, including getting every active bishop in Chile to offer to resign.

To date, he has accepted seven of the more than 30 resignations offered, including that of Barros. It was the second time in a month that Francis has laicized a Chilean priest, after five years in which the Vatican appeared to favor less drastic sentences.

On Sept. 15, the archdiocese of Santiago announced that Francis had defrocked the Rev. Christian Precht, citing the Latin terminology — "ex officio et pro bono Ecclesiae" — on his own authority and for the good of the church.

The decision by Francis to revisit Karadima's sentence and impose the stiffest penalty available to him, with the exception of excommunication, is significant as he battles to gain credibility on the abuse issue.

Francis has said he has "zero tolerance" for abuse, but his record has been shoddy and the Barros fiasco made clear that, at least until he changed course this spring, he was more willing to believe his clerical friends and advisers than victims.

Pollsters have cited the Karadima scandal, which first erupted in 2009, as the tipping point in the Chilean church's progressive loss of credibility among ordinary Chileans.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of Karadima's abuse who has been a key driver in pushing for justice for victims and an overhaul of the Chilean hierarchy, thanked Francis for taking action against Karadima.

"I never thought I'd see this day," Cruz tweeted. "I hope many survivors feel a bit of relief today." </s> Vatican Police have broken up a gay orgy at the residence of an advisor to Pope Francis, an Italian newspaper reports.

Local police officers entered the premises late last month after neighbours complained about strange happenings and frequent visitors to the address in Vatican City.

The apartment that was raided was being used by an aide to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, and was allegedly full of men who were taking drugs and having sex. The priest who was residing in the property was arrested and taken to a drug detox clinic. The paper reports that the priest in question is now at a spiritual retreat in Italy.

Cardinal Coccopalmerio, is a key member of the Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which oversees the investigation of clerical sex abuse. Pope Francis is said to be “enraged” by the incident.

The Cardinal may be forced to retire early as a result of the raid, despite the fact that he does not appear to have been directly involved.

Earlier this year, the Pope welcomed the openly gay Prime Minister of Luxembourg and his husband to the Vatican.

Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and his partner Gauthier Destenay, joined European heads of government for the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome last month.

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 Check out X-rated pictures from Greek’s Come True calendar (NSFW) </s> ROME (AP) — The Latest on the resignation of the Knights of Malta head (all times local):

The Vatican says Pope Francis will name a pontifical delegate to run the embattled Knights of Malta, effectively taking over the sovereign lay Catholic order after its leader resigned in a bitter dispute with the pontiff over condoms.

The move marks an extraordinary intervention of one sovereign state — the Holy See — into the governance of another — the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, an ancient aristocratic order that runs a vast charity operation around the globe.

A statement from the Vatican said Francis accepted the resignation of the order’s grand master, Matthew Festing, which he had offered Tuesday.

The statement said the order’s governance would shift temporarily to the No. 2 “until the pontifical delegate is named.”

The head of the Knights of Malta has resigned after entering into a public spat with Pope Francis over the ouster of a top official involved in a condom scandal.

Marianna Balfour, spokeswoman for the ancient lay Catholic order, told The Associated Press that Matthew Festing had met with the pope on Tuesday and offered his resignation.

In an email, Balfour said that “I can confirm this.”

Festing had refused to cooperate with a papal commission investigating his ouster of the grand chancellor, Albrecht von Boeselager, over revelations that the order’s charity branch had distributed condoms under his watch. Festing had cited the Knights’ status as a sovereign entity in refusing to cooperate. </s> VATICAN CITY—Pope Francis on Saturday pushed out the Vatican’s conservative doctrine chief, tapping a deputy instead to lead the powerful congregation that handles sex-abuse cases and guarantees Catholic orthodoxy around the world.

Francis and German Cardinal Gerhard Müller had clashed, most recently over the pope’s cautious opening to letting civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion. Cardinal Müller had insisted they cannot,... </s> ROME (AP) – The Latest on the resignation of the Knights of Malta head (all times local):

3:40 p.m. – The Knights of Malta has summoned its top governing body for a special session to formally accept the resignation of its leader after the pope announced a takeover of the sovereign lay Catholic group.

The meeting is set for Saturday.

The Vatican announced it was taking over the order after the chief knight, Matthew Festing, openly defied Pope Francis in a public spat over condoms. Festing resigned on Tuesday and the Vatican announced it would name a papal delegate to run the order.

The Vatican’s intervention is extraordinary given the Knights of Malta isn’t a typical religious order like the Jesuits, but rather a sovereign entity under international law, one that has diplomatic relations with more than 100 countries, the Holy See included.

1:25 p.m. – The Vatican says Pope Francis will name a pontifical delegate to run the embattled Knights of Malta, effectively taking over the sovereign lay Catholic order after its leader resigned in a bitter dispute with the pontiff over condoms.

The move marks an extraordinary intervention of one sovereign state – the Holy See – into the governance of another – the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, an ancient aristocratic order that runs a vast charity operation around the globe.

A statement from the Vatican said Francis accepted the resignation of the order’s grand master, Matthew Festing, which he had offered Tuesday.

The statement said the order’s governance would shift temporarily to the No. 2 “until the pontifical delegate is named.”

8:20 a.m. – The head of the Knights of Malta has resigned after entering into a public spat with Pope Francis over the ouster of a top official involved in a condom scandal.

Marianna Balfour, spokeswoman for the ancient lay Catholic order, told The Associated Press that Matthew Festing had met with the pope on Tuesday and offered his resignation.

In an email, Balfour said that “I can confirm this.”

Festing had refused to cooperate with a papal commission investigating his ouster of the grand chancellor, Albrecht von Boeselager, over revelations that the order’s charity branch had distributed condoms under his watch. Festing had cited the Knights’ status as a sovereign entity in refusing to cooperate.

The following video of Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger attending Pope Francis’ weekly audience in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Wednesday, January 25, 2017 was posted on The Associated Press YouTube channel: </s> Yesterday, the Grand Master of the 13,000-strong Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, Fra Matthew Festing, hurried across Rome from his order’s headquarters near the Spanish Steps, on the most luxurious shopping street in all of Rome, the via Condotti, toward Vatican City.

Pope Francis had summoned him to a meeting.

At about 5 in the afternoon, Festing entered the Vatican and proceeded to the Domus Santa Marta guest house, where the Pope lives.

There, the two men huddled for a private meeting.

At the end of the meeting, Pope Francis asked Festing to submit his resignation as the head of the Knights of Malta.

Today, Festing did so, with communiques from both the Vatican and the Knights of Malta announcing the news of the resignation, and the news that Pope Francis has accepted the resignation. (Though, technically, the resignation must be presented on January 28 to the Malta order’s governing council, which must accept it to make it official, and only then inform the Pope for his knowledge; but the Pope’s acceptance of the resignation having already occurred, it is not clear what purpose the January 28 meeting can have.)

Here below, a picture of Pope Francis with Festing, who has just resigned as head of the Knights of Malta; in the background on the left is Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, Prefect of the Pontifical Household and personal secretary of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI



 So the Knights of Malta are suddenly without a leader.

Moreover, in a further startling development, the Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will soon announce his personal choice to be his “delegate” to temporarily run the more than 900-year-old military order. of Malta.

This is unprecedented. The order has always elected its own Grand Master. Never has a Pope acted in this way before toward the order. And this has raised eyebrows worldwide. (link and link)

In the first link just cited, Ed Condon writes in the Catholic Herald of London, “The most remarkable thing about the Order of Malta controversy is not that the Grand Master, Fra’ Matthew Festing, has resigned. That is extraordinary enough, especially given that it was apparently on the invitation of Pope Francis. No, the most astonishing feature of the story is today’s announcement that the Pope will install an Apostolic Delegate to run the Order. In effect, this abolishes the Order as a sovereign entity. Under international law, what we are seeing is effectively the annexation of one country by another.”

So this action of Pope Francis is a dramatic break with all of the order’s history up to now.

What does it mean?

In this case, as in so any others, the old adage again applies: “Those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know.”

But perhaps we may catch at least a glimpse into the meaning of these events if we study the various official communiques and media reports, while for context and background we rely on several off-the-record conversations recently in Rome.

These reports and these conversations suggest that a struggle of considerable importance is currently underway in Rome, in the global Church, and in the world outside of the Church, over the direction humanity will take in the years and decades to come.

There are presently two huge threats to the Church, a Scylla and a Charybdis which the Church must pass between or be profoundly harmed: the rejection of traditional Church teaching in order to accommodate the Church to the teaching of “the world,” on the one hand, and, on the other hand, schism.

The first would betray the Church’s nature and mission; the second would cost the Church dearly as the world would likely exploit the divisions in a devastating way.

The battle over the leadership of the Knights of Malta must be seen in this context.

Moreover, during the past several months, quietly and privately on most occasions, but sometimes publicly, a word has been whispered and spoken aloud in Rome in a way unlike any other time in the 33 years that I have been writing about Vatican affairs. That word is freemasonry.

“The fact is that the thought of freemasonry, which was the thought of the Enlightenment, believes Christ and his teachings, as taught by the Church, are an impediment to human freedom and self-fulfillment,” a retired Vatican official told me. “And this thought has become dominant in the elites of the West, even when those elites are not officially members of any freemasonic lodge. It is a pervasive modern worldview.”

This bears repeating and emphasizing: in any particular case, it may not be so much actual membership in a masonic lodge that is involved, but rather adherence to principles of that “masonic thought” which views man in a “Promethean” way, that man should “steal fire from heaven,” wrest it from the gods for the benefit of men, seek ever greater knowledge (computers, the genetic code, transhumanism, Homo Sapiens Version 2.0, “better” than the species currently is), not accepting any limit to the human ambitions to “be like gods.”

How does this relate to the shake-up at the top of the Order of Malta?

Well, there have recently been an allegation that a high-ranking member of the order (not Festing) approved decisions not in keeping with Catholic moral teaching, and more precisely, sent condoms and other contraceptives in shipments of medical supplies to poor countries — that is, allowed a certain “non-Catholic moral view” to enter into the order’s decision-making.

And, published reports have stated something that few have noted, but which must be studied and explained: that Pope Francis, in a meeting in November with Cardinal Raymond Burke, gave Burke a very unusual instruction.

The Pope, it is reported, during their November 10 meeting, asked Burke, the American cardinal who is the ecclesial Patron of the Knights of Malta,

 to carry out an important and delicate task: to ferret out and remove from the Knights of Malta all members who are… freemasons.

Here is the published source for this information, which comes about halfway through a quite thorough and rather lengthy article which bears reading in full. It is by Edward Pentin published in the National Catholic Register on January 7:

“Hopes that the contraceptive scandal would be addressed came on Nov. 10, when Cardinal Burke was received in private audience by Pope Francis.

“During that meeting, the Register has learned, the Pope was ‘deeply disturbed’ by what the cardinal told him about the contraceptive distribution.

“The Pope also made it clear to Cardinal Burke that he wanted Freemasonry ‘cleaned out’ from the order, and he demanded appropriate action.

“The concern was followed up by a Dec. 1 letter to Cardinal Burke, in which the Register has learned that the Holy Father underlined the cardinal’s constitutional duty to promote the spiritual interests of the order and remove any affiliation with groups or practices that run contrary to the moral law.” (link)

Here, repeated, is the critical phrase:

“The Pope also made it clear to Cardinal Burke that he wanted Freemasonry ‘cleaned out’ from the order…”

Where does this information come from? How reliable is it?

Pentin tells us quite matter-of-factly that “the Register has learned” about the contents of Burke’s November 10 meeting with the Pope.

Evidently, Pentin either spoke with Burke himself, or with someone close to Burke, perhaps one of his secretaries, or he spoke with Pope Francis, because it does not seem possible that anyone other than Burke and Pope Francis could be the source of news about a private conversation between the two men, and about a private letter sent by one to the other.

In short, Burke, seen as one of the leaders of the “traditional” faction in the Church and in the College of Cardinals because of his raising questions about the “progressive” teaching of Pope Francis, especially in Amoris Laetitia, was evidently, in this case, as recently as November 10, and again in a December 1 letter, asked by Pope Francis to carry out a very delicate task, and to do so urgently.

But this would suggest that the two men have a different relationship than the one most of the world seems to have concluded they have…

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What is the glory of God?

“The glory of God is man alive; but the life of man is the vision of God.” —St. Irenaeus of Lyons, in the territory of France, in his great work Against All Heresies, written c. 180 A.D. </s> Reports from the Vatican indicates that the Police have raided a drug-fueled gay sex party at the residence of an aide to one of Pope Francis’s advisers.

It was gathered that the Pope is angered by the development since the apartment belongs to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith — the arm responsible for dealing with clerical sex abuse.

Recall that last month the police also raided the building following complains in the neigbourhood that strange persons have been coming there.

Further reports indicate that the police found men getting high and getting on when they raided the apartment.

The priest was arrested after he was detoxified of the drugs he took.

It was gathered that his arrest is unconnected to gay sex since it is legal in the Vatican.

The priest is now on a spiritual retreat in a convent in Italy.

Coccopalmerio had recommended his secretary for a promotion to bishop, but the possibilities are now fading away after the incident and two previous alleged drug overdoses.

Reports suggest that Pope Francis may force the cardinal into retirement as the scandal comes one week after the Vatican was hit by sex abuse accusations against high-ranking Cardinal, George Pell. </s> Santiago: In an unprecedented move in the modern history of the Catholic church every bishop in Chile has offered his resignation to Pope Francis, in a case involving sex abuse scandal, media reported.

Thirty one active bishops and three retired bishops on Friday announced their resignation after a three-day emergency summit at the Vatican to discuss Chile's sex abuse scandal.

The simultaneous resignation of all the bishops in a single country is thought to be unprecedented, CNN reported.

The resignations came as the bishops said they placed the issue "in the hands of the Holy Father so that he might freely decide for each one of us".

Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said he had no comment on whether Pope Francis would accept the mass resignation.

In response to the resignation of the country's bishops on Friday, Marie Collins, a former member of the Pope's Commission for the Protection of Minors, said that the gesture was not enough.

"No bishop removed — all allowed to resign. Really nothing changes," Collins wrote on Twitter.

Pope Francis called the country's bishops to Rome after he received a 2,300-page report detailing sexual abuses by priests in Chile.

At the centre of the scandal is the Bishop of Osorno, Juan Barros, whom Francis appointed in 2015 amid an outcry that Barros had known about and covered up abuses.

The Pope stridently defended Bishop Barros, calling accusations against him "calumny".

In an about-face in April, after receiving the Vatican investigator's report, the Pope said he had made "grave errors in judgment", and apologised to Chile's sex abuse victims.

In May, the Pope met privately at the Vatican with three of Barros' main accusers and asked their forgiveness.
Pope Francis, head of state of the Vatican City and leader of the Roman Catholic Church, threatens to order the abdication of Andorran co-monarch Joan Enric Vives Sicília, Archbishop-Bishop of Urgell, if the country decriminalises or legalises abortion.