Knights of Malta Elects new Grand Master of Order

Matthew Festing,59,will head the world's oldest chivalric order, founded in the 11th century.He is a descendent of Blessed Adrian Fortescue, a Knight of Malta who was martyred in the 16th century.

ROME (CNS) - In a secret and swift election, the Knights of Malta elected an Englishman as their 79th grand master.

Matthew Festing, who had been the Knights' grand prior of England, was chosen March 11 to replace Andrew W.N. Bertie, who died in February.

Festing, 59, will head the world's oldest chivalric order, founded in the 11th century. He is only the second Englishman to hold the post of grand master; Bertie was the first.

Known officially as the Sovereign Military Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, the organization was established to care for pilgrims during the Crusades. It lives on today as a lay Catholic religious order and a worldwide humanitarian network.

The order is also a sovereign state, holding observer status at the United Nations and maintaining diplomatic relations with 100 countries.

Festing, an expert in art and history, joined the Knights in 1977 and in 1991 became a "professed" knight, taking religious vows. He is a descendent of Blessed Adrian Fortescue, a Knight of Malta who was martyred in the 16th century.

As head of the English priory, Festing organized humanitarian assistance missions to Lebanon and Kosovo and led a delegation on the order's annual pilgrimage with the sick to Lourdes.

In a statement issued after his election, the new grand master said he wanted to continue the work of his predecessor, who was credited with expanding the order's humanitarian services and its diplomatic connections.

Pope Benedict XVI was informed of Festing's election before it was announced to the world.

The election of a grand master is a major event in Rome. Fifty electors, representing the 12,500 male and female members of the order, filed into the Knights' villa on Rome's Aventine Hill, wearing their distinctive red robes decorated with the Maltese cross.

The election, which began with a Mass, had similarities to a papal conclave. The grand master had to be chosen from among the order's approximately 50 professed Knights.

The voting was done by a secret ballot, after nonvoters were asked to leave. No politicking was allowed, and the new grand master had to receive a "majority plus one" of the total votes -- at least 27 out of 50.

At a press conference a few days before the election, leading Knights said the order is often wrongly depicted as an elite, wealthy secret society.

"In many ways, we are misunderstood," said Winfried Henckel von Donnersmark, a member of the order's sovereign council. In part, that's because of the unusual nature of the organization, he said.

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The Knights are a religious order, yet the vast majority of members are lay, he pointed out. It is a Catholic organization, but its humanitarian operations are open to people of all faiths. And while it does have some property and patrimony, it has to continually raise funds to support its annual $1 billion in charity works around the world, he said.

Membership in the order is by invitation. Knights and Dames are practicing Catholics and devote part of their time to doing works of mercy.

The professed members are all male, but women form an increasingly important part of the order, officials said.

According to Albrecht von Boeselager, one of the order's chief officials, the Knights have about 80,000 local volunteers working in 120 countries throughout the world. The organization is welcomed by so many governments -- even by the military regime in Myanmar, for example -- because it adheres to strict neutrality on political issues, he said.

"We don't consider ourselves a human rights organization. If making accusations on human rights issues would prevent us from assisting the needy, we would prefer to be silent," von Boeselager said.

In the Middle East and Asia, however, the Knights' neutrality has recently been called into question by extremist propaganda, he said.

"We have been accused of being part of a 'new crusade,' and even of having mercenaries fighting in Iraq. That is totally untrue, and it endangers our personnel in Muslim countries," he said.

Noreen Falcone, president of the Knights' U.S. federal association, said the order's organizational structure gives it the ability to move quickly into disaster areas. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, for example, the order went to work immediately.

"We're still there, building homes and helping to give people back their self-respect," she said.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops