Please answer the following question: Information: - Valletta is the capital city of Malta, colloquially known as Il-Belt (lit. "The City") in Maltese. Geographically, it is located in the South Eastern Region, in the central-eastern portion of the main island of Malta having its western coast with access to the Marsamxett Harbour and its eastern coast in the Grand Harbour. The historical city has a population of 6,444 (as of March 2014), while the metropolitan area around it has a population of 393,938. Valletta is the southernmost capital of Europe and the second southernmost capital of the European Union after Nicosia. - International law is the set of rules generally regarded and accepted as binding in relations between states and between nations. It serves as a framework for the practice of stable and organized international relations. International law differs from state-based legal systems in that it is primarily applicable to countries rather than to private citizens. National law may become international law when treaties delegate national jurisdiction to supranational tribunals such as the European Court of Human Rights or the International Criminal Court. Treaties such as the Geneva Conventions may require national law to conform to respective parts. - Malta, officially known as the Republic of Malta, is a Southern European island country consisting of an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea. It lies south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The country covers just over , with a population of just under 450,000, making it one of the world's smallest and most densely populated countries. The capital of Malta is Valletta, which at 0.8km, is the smallest national capital in the European Union. Malta has two official languages: Maltese and English. - The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was a crusader state established in the Southern Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks, but its history is divided into two distinct periods. The sometimes so-called First Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187, when it was almost entirely overrun by Saladin. After the subsequent Third Crusade, the kingdom was re-established in Acre in 1192, and lasted until that city's destruction in 1291. This second kingdom is sometimes called the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Kingdom of Acre, after its new capital. - The First Crusade (10951099) was the first of a number of crusades that attempted to capture the Holy Land, called by Pope Urban II in 1095. It started as a widespread pilgrimage in western Christendom and ended as a military expedition by Roman Catholic Europe to regain the Holy Land taken in the Muslim conquests of the Levant (632661), ultimately resulting in the capture of Jerusalem in 1099. - The Order of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem ( Latin : Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani ) , also known as Order of Saint John , Order of Hospitallers , Knights Hospitaller , and the Hospitallers , was the name of the precedent medieval military organisation of the contemporary Sovereign Military Order of Malta , one of the most prominent of the Roman Catholic military orders and still today a sovereign subject of international law . It was headquartered in the Kingdom of Jerusalem , Rhodes and Malta , until it became known by its current name . The Hospitallers probably arose as a group of individuals associated with an Amalfitan hospital in the Muristan district of Jerusalem , dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and founded around 1023 to provide care for sick , poor or injured pilgrims coming to the Holy Land . Some scholars , however , consider that the Amalfitan order and hospital were different from Gerard Thom 's order and its hospital . After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade , the organisation became a religious and military order under its own Papal charter , charged with the care and defence of the Holy Land . Following the conquest of the Holy Land by Islamic forces , the knights operated from Rhodes , over which they were sovereign , and later from Malta , where they administered a vassal state under the Spanish viceroy of Sicily . The Hospitallers were the smallest group ever to colonise parts of the Americas ; at one point in the mid- 17th century , they acquired four Caribbean islands , which they turned over to the French and Dutch in the 1660s . The knights were weakened in the Protestant Reformation , when rich commanderies of the order in northern Germany and the Netherlands became Protestant and largely separated from the Roman Catholic main stem , remaining separate to this day . The order was disestablished in England , Denmark , Sweden and elsewhere in northern Europe . The Roman Catholic order was further damaged by Napoleon 's... - Rome is a city and special "comune" (named "Roma Capitale") in Italy. Rome is the capital of Italy and of the Lazio region. With 2,870,336 residents in , it is also the country's largest and most populated "comune" and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The Metropolitan City of Rome has a population of 4.3million residents. The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of Tiber river. The Vatican City is an independent country geographically located within the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been often defined as capital of two states. - The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. It has an area of , and an estimated population of over 510 million. The EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital within the internal market, enact legislation in justice and home affairs, and maintain common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries, and regional development. Within the Schengen Area, passport controls have been abolished. A monetary union was established in 1999 and came into full force in 2002, and is composed of 19 EU member states which use the euro currency. - The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, also known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) or Order of Malta, is a Roman Catholic lay religious order traditionally of military, chivalrous and noble nature. It was founded as the Knights Hospitaller circa 1099 in Jerusalem, Kingdom of Jerusalem, by the Blessed Gerard, making it the world's oldest surviving chivalric order. Headquartered in Palazzo Malta in Rome, widely considered a sovereign subject of international law, its mission is summed up in its motto: "Tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum", "Defence of the (Catholic) faith and assistance to the poor". - The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands. The ICC has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The ICC is intended to complement existing national judicial systems and it may therefore only exercise its jurisdiction when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer investigations to the Court. The ICC began functioning on 1 July 2002, the date that the Rome Statute entered into force. The Rome Statute is a multilateral treaty which serves as the ICC's foundational and governing document. States which become party to the Rome Statute, for example by ratifying it, become member states of the ICC. Currently, there are 124 states which are party to the Rome Statute and therefore members of the ICC. However, Burundi, South Africa, and the Gambia have given formal notice that they will withdraw from the Rome Statute. After reading the paragraphs above, we are interested in knowing the entity with which 'knights hospitaller' exhibits the relationship of 'allegiance'. Find the answer from the choices below. Choices: - netherlands - pope - union
A:
pope