National Catholic Reporter: Knights Of Malta Know (1989)

[ephilution]

The following is a slightly edited excerpt from People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism [Viking], by Penny Lernoux.

By PENNY LERNOUX-

One of Catholicism's oldest lay orders, the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta, better known as the Knights of Malta, or SMOM, is unique in several ways. Although it has no territory outside its headquarters in a Roman palazzo, it enjoys the status of a sovereign state, maintaining relations with 49 countries and issuing its own passports and stamps. Its 13,000 members include some of the world's most powerful figures, among them heads of state.

While it pledges allegiance to the pope, neither he nor the order's grand master in Rome has real control over SMOM's various national associations, some of whose members have been involved in fascist plots and CIA covert wars. And while dedicated to charitable work, such as funding leprosariums and contributing medical supplies to the Third World, it also serves as an old-boys' club for the European aristocracy and the political right in the United States and Latin America.

SMOM was founded in the 11th century to provide medical aid and military protection for-pilgrims to the holy city of Jerusalem. The order's knights participated in several important crusades, and gifts it received soon gave it control over extensive estates throughout Europe. The wealth of the knights' grand priories greatly increased in the 14th century when they absorbed the estates belonging to the Knights Templar, whom they helped to destroy, and for a time they maintained control of the island of Rhodes.

Forced from Rhodes by Sultan Muhammad II in the 15th century, they eventually settled on the island of Malta, which gave the order its name. The Knights remained a major military presence in the Mediterranean until 1789, when Napoleon occupied Malta. After a brief sojourn in Russia, the order in 1834 established headquarters in Rome under papal protection.

By the end of the century, it had become a charitable organization of the aristocracy devoted to the care of the sick and the wounded. It maintained its exclusivity by refusing to accept members from Europe and Latin America who were not of the nobility or heads of state. In recent years the ruling has been relaxed for Latin America, but even as late as the 1940s the order refused to admit Eva Peron as a dame because of her proletarian background.

An exception was made for the United States because of its rising political, economic and military power, and in 1927 a branch of SMOM was established on the East Coast. Most of the founding members were tycoons of industry and finance who would strongly oppose Roosevelt's New Deal [one, John J. Raskob, the chairman of the board of General Motors, even became involved in a plot to seize the White House].

They were soon joined by such titans as John Farrell, president of U.S. Steel; Joseph P. Grace, of W.R. Grace & Co.; Joseph Kennedy, a Boston entrepreneur and father of a future president of the United States; and George MacDonald of Pennsylvania, who made a fortune in oil and utilities.

MacDonald was typical of those who joined SMOM for the sheer fun of it. In recognition of generous contributions to the church, he was made a papal marquis as well as a grand master of the Knights, of Malta. MacDonald loved to dress up in the splashy Knights costume, with its ostrich-plumed hat, gold spurs and a uniform with gold epaulets, sashes and the medal with the Knights' eight-pointed Maltese cross

Many of the approximately 1,500 Americans who subsequently joined the knighthood also enjoyed the rituals of induction at the local cathedral and the ceremonies in honor of the order's patron, St. John. But for others, SMOM was more than pomp and circumstance-it was a source of money and power.

Among the latter was New York's Cardinal Francis Spellman, at one time the most powerful Catholic churchman in the United States. He became involved with the American branch of SMOM almost from its founding and was the order's official church patron in the United States when he was auxiliary bishop of Boston. After he became archbishop of New York in 1939, he changed his title to "Grand Protector" [apparently to distinguish it from that of King Leopold and Queen Wilhelmina, who were mere "protectors" of the Belgian and Dutch branches of the Knights].

Spellman enjoyed the support of the right wing of the curia, particularly Cardinal Nicola Canali, who dominated Vatican finances, and Canali authorized his monopoly over Knight appointments in the United States. The quid pro quo was that, instead of sending the American Knights' contributions to SMOM headquarters in Rome, Spellman funneled the money into Canali's coffers. When SMOM's grand master demanded an accounting from Spellman, he got no answer. No action was taken against Spellman, however, because at the time the order was fighting for its life against Canali, who wanted to gain control of its wealth.

Spellman's financial contributions to the Vatican, his friendship with Pius XII and his access to U.S. economic and political elites, some of them Knights, gave him immense power, and by World War II he had become the Vatican's go-between with the White House and its proconsul in Latin America.

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