VATICAN CITY
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JAN. 25, 2017
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican said Wednesday it was taking over the embattled Knights of Malta lay Catholic order in an extraordinary display of papal power after the Knights’ grand master publicly defied Pope Francis in a bitter dispute over condoms.
The move marks the 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.
The Vatican said Matthew Festing, 67, offered to resign as grand master Tuesday during an audience with the pope, and that Francis had accepted it on Wednesday.
The statement said the order’s governance would shift temporarily to the order’s No. 2 “pending the appointment of the papal delegate.”
The naming of a delegate signals a Vatican takeover, harking back to the Vatican’s previous takeovers of the Legion of Christ and Jesuit religious orders when they were undergoing periods of scandal or turmoil.
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