Sovereign Military Order of Malta
Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem
Knights of Malta
Malteser International
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is both a lay religious order of the Catholic Church and a sovereign state subject to international law. It has sovereign status and is recognised by about 100 countries. The order adopted a new constitution in 2022, after a long reform process, initiated by Pope Francis in 2017 and fraught by concerns of threat to the group’s sovereignty.
The Order is a unique subject of international law. Although it possesses no territory except for its extraterritorial headquarters in Rome and a fort in Malta, it maintains diplomatic relations with over 100 states and was granted Permanent Observer at the United Nations since 1994 . This special status allows it to operate neutrally and impartially in international humanitarian aid. The Order's special status within the UN system is unique. Unlike member states, it does not have the right to vote on resolutions. Instead, it is classified as one of the "other entities having received a standing invitation to participate as observers".
Malteser International is an international humanitarian aid organization. It is the relief agency of the Catholic Sovereign Order of Malta and fulfills its mission to “serve the poor and the sick”. Malteser International uses its special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to influence policy-making, share on-the-ground expertise, and coordinate with the international humanitarian community. The status, granted in 2018, positions it as a key partner in addressing humanitarian issues at the highest levels of international discourse.
The Order of Malta, the ancient Roman Catholic aristocratic lay order, had 13,500 members and 100,000 staff and volunteers providing health care in hospitals and clinics around the world and respond to war zones and natural disasters. It has many trappings of a sovereign state, issuing its own stamps, passports and license plates and holding diplomatic relations with 106 states, the Holy See included.
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) is a Roman Catholic lay religious order with roots in the Crusades, initially founded to care for the sick and poor pilgrims in the Holy Land. Known as the Knights Hospitaller, they developed into a military order, defending Christian territories and eventually establishing their headquarters in Malta after being expelled from other locations like Rhodes. Today, while no longer a territorial power, the Order of Malta continues its humanitarian mission, with activities focused on healthcare, social assistance, and diplomacy worldwide, operating in over 120 countries.
Following the fall of the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land in 1291, the Order moved to Cyprus and then to the island of Rhodes in 1310, where they became known as the Knights of Rhodes. After losing Rhodes to the Ottoman Turks in 1522, the Order was given the island of Malta by Emperor Charles V in 1530. It ruled Malta until Napoleon's forces captured the island in 1798. With the loss of its territory in Malta, the Order was dispersed. After residing in several other locations, its headquarters were permanently established in Rome in 1834. The military function ceased, and the Order returned to its original hospitaller mission.
Pope Francis asked the head of the ancient chivalric and charity institution, Knights of Malta Grand Master Matthew Festing, 67, to step down at a meeting on 24 January 2017. Grand masters usually rule for life. Festing's resignation was the first in recent history. The Order of Malta’s overhaul was also marked by years of changing leadership, beginning with the dismissal of Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager in December 2017. The grand chancellor’s dismissal followed revelations that the order’s charitable branch, under Boeselager’s leadership, had been involved in distributing condoms in Burma to prevent HIV. The order said the reasons for Boeselager’s dismissal was “much more complex than just the point on contraception,” and one factor was the concealment of “severe problems” within the order during his tenure.
The Vatican, which is a sovereign state, said that the pope would name a "pontifical delegate" to run the group. 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. But unlike the Knights of Malta, thse orders were not sovereign.
One of the order's top knights, Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager, was fired in December 2016 in the chivalric equivalent of a boardroom showdown - ostensibly because he allowed the use of condoms in a medical project for the poor. Von Boeselager appealed to the pope, who appointed a five-member commission to look into the sacking, but Festing refused to cooperate, saying it violated the order's sovereign status. Francis had said he wanted the 1.2 billion-member church to avoid so-called "culture wars" over moral teachings and show mercy to those who cannot live by all its rules, especially the poor.
Pope Leo XIV in a message 24 June 2025 to the Order of Malta underlined the order’s religious character, stressing that without evangelization, the knights’ service to the poor is merely philanthropy. “Do not limit yourself to helping the needs of the poor, but announce to them the love of God with words and testimony. If this were to be lacking, the order would lose its religious character and would be reduced to being an organization with philanthropic purposes,” Leo wrote in a message to the order on the feast of its patron saint, St. John the Baptist. The pope also met for the first time with the order’s grand master, Fra’ John Dunlap, at the Vatican on June 23. In his June 24 message, Leo pointed multiple times to the order’s important dual purpose of “tuitio fidei and obsequium pauperum.” (Latin for “protection of faith” and “service to the poor.”)
The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta is a religious order of the Roman Catholic Church. The Sovereign Order is headquartered in Rome, Italy, and it performs charitable works across the globe. For example, the Sovereign Order supports the operation of the Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem and several medical clinics in Haiti.
At least 20 charitable organizations can be found on the Internet that use the terms ‘Saint John,’ ‘Knights,’ ‘Hospitallers,’ and ‘Knights of Malta’ in the names.” And many “Orders of St. John” and “Orders of the Knights of Malta,” foreign and domestic, are featured in tourism publications for the island of Malta.
The Knights Hospitallers of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, the Ecumenical Order is the Florida Priory, which is non-Catholic. These two similar but distinct operations spend a fair amount of time suing each other. In a published opinion, one district judge wrote the following disparaging comment: "The parties present themselves as Christian charities. The Court struggles with the parties’ characterizing themselves in that manner, however. The amounts of money each party has raised for charitable purposes are unimpressive, which leads the Court to believe that the members of both [the Sovereign Order] and the [Florida Priory] are more interested in dressing up in costumes, conferring titles on each other and playing in a “weird world of princes and knights” than in performing charitable acts."
This Order, which at various times in the progress of its history received the names of Knights Hospitalers, Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of Rhodes, and, lastly, Knights of Malta, was one of the most important of the religious and military orders of knighthood which sprang into existence during the Crusades which were instituted for the recovery of the Holy Land.
Knights Hospitalers owes its origin to the Hospitalers of Jerusalem, that wholly religious and charitable Order which was established at Jerusalem, in 1048, by pious merchants of Amalfi for the succor of poor and distressed Latin pilgrims. This society, established when Jerusalem was in possession of the Mohammedans, passed through many vicissitudes, but livea to see the Holy City conquered by the Christian knights. It then received many accessions from the Crusaders, who, laying aside their arms, devoted themselves to the pious avocation of attending the sick.
It was then that Gerard, the Rector of the Hospital, induced the brethren to take upon themselves the vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity, which they did at the hands of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who clothed them in the habit selected for the Order, which was a plain, black robe bearing a white cross of eight points on the left breast. This was in the year 1099, and some writers here date the beginning of the Order of Knights of Malta. But this is an error.
It was not until after the death of Gerard that the Order assumed that military character which it ever afterward maintained, or, in other words, that the peaceful Hospitalers of Jerusalem became the warlike Knights of St. John. In 1118, Gerard, the Rector of the Hospital, died, and was succeeded by Raymond du Puy, whom Marulli, the old chronicler of the Order, in his Vite de Gran Maestri (Napoli, 1636), calls "secondo Rettore e primo Maestro."
The peaceful habits and monastic seclusion of the Brethren of the Hospital, which had been fostered by Gerard, no tonger suited the warlike genius of his successor. He therefore proposed a change in the character of the society, by which it should become a military Order, devoted to active labors in the field and the protection of Palestine from the encroachments of the infidels. This proposition was warmly approved by Baldwyn II, King of Jerusalem, who, harassed by a continual warfare, gladly accepted this addition to his forces. The Order having thus been organized on a military basis, the members took a new oath, at the hands of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, by which they bound themselves to defend the cause of Christianity against the infidels in the Holy Land to the last drop of their blood, but on no account to bear arms for any other purpose.
This act, done in 1118, is considered as the beginning of the establishment of the Order of Knights Hospitalers of St. John, of which Raymond du Puy is, by all historians, deemed the first Grand Master.
By the rule established by Du Puy for the government of the Order, it was divided into three classes, namely, 1. Knights, who were called Knights of Justice; 2. Chaplains; and 3. Serving Brothers ; all of whom took the three vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty. There was also attached to the institution a body of men called Donats, who, without assuming the vows of the Order, were employed in the different offices of the hospital, and who wore what was called the demicross, as a badge of their connection.
The history of the Knights from this time until the middle of the sixteenth century is but a chronicle of continued warfare with the enemies of the Christian faith. When Jerusalem was captured by Saladin, in 1187, the Hospitalers retired to Margat, a town and fortress of Palestine which still acknowledged the Christian sway. In 1191, they made Acre, which in that year had been recaptured by the Christians, their principal place of residence. For just one hundred years the knights were engaged, with varying success, in sanguinary contests with the Saracens and other infidel hordes, until Acre, the last stronghold of the Christians in the Holy Land, having fallen beneath the blows of the victorious Moslems, Syria was abandoned by the Latin race, and the Hospitalers found refuge in the island of Cyprus, wnere they established their convent.
The Order had been much attenuated by its frequent losses in the field, and its treasury had been impoverished. But commands were at once issued by John de Villiers, the Grand Master, to the different Grand Priories in Europe, and large reinforcements in men and money were soon received, so that the Fraternity were enabled again to open their hospital and to recommence the practise of their religious duties. No longer able to continue their military exploits on land, the knights betook themselves to their galleys, and, while they protected the pilgrims who still flocked in vast numbers to Palestine, gave security to the Christian commerce of the Mediterranean. On sea, as on land, the Hospitalers still showed that they were the inexorable and terrible foes of the infidels, whose captured vessels soon filled the harbor of Cyprus.
But in time a residence in Cyprus became unpleasant. The king, by heavy taxes and other rigorous exactions, had so disgusted them, that they determined to seek some other residence. The neighboring island of Rhodes had long, under its independent princes, been the refuge of Turkish corsairs; a name equivalent to the more modern one of pirates. Fulk de Villaret, the Grand Master of the Hospital, having obtained the approval of Pope Clement and the assistance of several of the European States, made a descent upon the island, and, after months of hard fighting, on the 15th of August, 1310, planted the standard of the Order on the walls of the city of Rhodes; and the island thenceforth became the home of the Hospitalers, whence they were often called the Knights of Rhodes.
The Fraternity continued to reside at Rhodes for two hundred years, acting as the outpost and defense of Christendom from the encroachments of the Ottoman power. Of this long period, but few years were passed in peace, and the military reputation of the Order was still more firmly established by the prowess of the knights. These two centuries were marked by other events which had an important bearing on the fortunes of the institution. The rival brotherhood of the Templars was abolished by the machinations of a pope and a king of France, and what of its revenues and possessions was saved from the spoliation of its enemies was transferred to the Hospitalers.
There had always existed a bitter rivalry between the two Orders, marked by unhappy contentions, which on some occasions, while both were in Palestine, amounted to actual strife. Toward the Knights of St. John the Templars had never felt nor expressed a very kindly feeling; and now this acceptance of an unjust appropriation of their goods in the hour of their disaster, keenly added to the sentiment of ill-will, and the unhappy Templars ["children of De Molay"], as they passed away from the theater of knighthood, left behind them the bitterest imprecations on the disciples of the Hospital.
The Order, during its residence at Rhodes, also underwent several changes in its organization, by which the simpler system observed during its infancy in the Holy Land was rendered more perfect and more complicated. The greatest of all these changes was in the character of the European Commanderies. During the period that the Order was occupied in the defense of the holy places, and losing large numbers of its warriors in its almost continual battles, these Commanderies served as nurseries for the preparation and education of young knights who might be sent to Palestine to reinforce the exhausted ranks of their brethren. But now, secured in their island home, Jerusalem permanently in possession of the infidel, and the enthusiasm once inspired by Peter the Hermit forever dead, there was no longer need for new Crusaders.
But the knights, engaged in strengthening and decorating their insular possession by erecting fortifications for defense, and palaces and convents for residence, now required large additions to their revenue to defray the expenses thus incurred. Hence the Commanderies were the sources whence this revenue was to be derived; and the Commanders, once the Principals, as it were, of military schools, became lords of the manor in their respective provinces. There, by a judicious and economical administration of the property which had been entrusted to them, by the cultivation of gardens and orchards, by the rent received from arable and meadow lands, of mills and fisheries appertaining to their estates, and even by the voluntary contributions of their neighbors, and by the raising of stock, they were enabled to add greatly to their income. Of this one-fifth was claimed, under the name of responsions, as a tribute to be sent annually to Rhodes for the recuperation of the always diminishing revenue of the Order.
Another important change in the organization of the Order was made at a General Chapter held about 1320 at Montpellier, under the Grand Mastership of Villanova. The Order was there divided into languages, a division unknown during its existence in Palestine. These languages were at first seven in number, but afterward increased to eight, by the subdivision of that of Aragon. The principal dignities of the Order were at the same time divided among these languages, so that a particular dignity should be always enjoyed by the same language. These languages, and the dignities respectively attached to them, were as follows:
- Provence: Grand Commander.
- Auvergne: Grand Marshal.
- France: Grand Hospitaler.
- Italy: Grand Admiral.
- Aragon: Grand Conservator.
- Germany: Grand Bailiff.
- Castile: Grand Chancellor.
- England: Grand Turcopolier.
But perhaps the greatest of all changes was that which took place in the personal character of the Knights. "The Order," says Taafe (Hist., iv., 234), "had been above two hundred years old before it managed a boat, but was altogether equestrian during its two first, and perhaps most glorious, centuries." But on settling at Rhodes, the knights began to attack their old enemies by sea with the same prowess with which they had formerly met them on land, and the victorious contests of the galleys of St. John with the Turkish corsairs, who were infesting the Mediterranean, proved them well entitled to the epithet of naval warriors.
In the year 1480, Rhodes was unsuccessfully besieged by the Ottoman army of Mohammed II, under the command of Paleologus Pasha. After many contests, the Turks were repulsed with great slaughter. But the attack of the Sultan Solyman, forty-four years afterward, was attended with a different result, and Rhodes was surrendered to the Turkish forces on the 20th of December, 1522. The terms of the capitulation were liberal to the knights, who were permitted to retire with all their personal property; and thus, in the Grand Mastership of L'Isle Adam, Rhodes ceased forever to be the home of the Order, and six days afterward, on New Year's Day, 1523, the fleet, containing the knights and four thousand of the inhabitants, sailed for the island of Candia [Crete].
From Candia, where the Grand Master remained but a short time, he proceeded with his knights to Italy. Seven long years were passed m negotiations with the monarchs of lurope, and in the search for a home. At length, the Emperor Charles V, of Germany, vested in the Order the complete and perpetual sovereignty of the islands of Malta and Gozo, and the city of Tripoli; and in 1530, the knights took formal possession of Malta, where, to borrow the language of Porter (Hist., ii., 33), "for upwards of two centuries and a half, waved the banner of St. John, an honor to Christianity and a terror to the infidel of the East." From this time the Order received the designation of "Knights of Malta," a title often bestowed upon it, even in official documents, in the place of the original one of "Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem."
A principal feature in the history of Greece, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is the evils it endured from the prevalence of piracy in the Levant. A number of Christian and Mohammedan galleys, under various flags, carried on a species of private warfare and rapine over the whole surface of the Mediterranean. The coasts of Spain, France, Italy, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily suffered severely from the plundering and slave-hunting expeditions of the corsairs from the ports of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, but the coasts of Greece suffered still more severely from Christian pirates, who acknowledged no allegiance to any government. The power and exploits of the corsairs during this period exercised an important influence on the commercial relations of southern Europe; they often circumscribed the extent and determined the channel of trade in the East, quite as directly as the political treaties and commercial conventions of the Christian powers with the Othoman Porte.
The maritime hostilities of the Knights of Malta, who were indefatigable corsairs, constantly excited the anger of the sultan's court, while their expeditions inflicted great losses and severe sufferings on the Greek population. It would be tedious to notice the various acts of systematic devastation recorded by travellers and historians during this Augustan age of piracy. The deeds of the corsairs in the Levant, and of the Uscoques in the Adriatic, almost rivalled the exploits of the buccaneers in the West Indies.
The cruelty of the Knights of Malta was not so infamous as that of the Venetians, for their warfare was open and systematic; but the losses they inflicted on the Turkish merchants and the frequent captures they made of wealthy Osmanlis on the passage between Constantinople, Syria, and Egypt, caused incessant complaints. The Porte was repeatedly urged to attack Malta, and destroy that nest of corsairs; but the memory of the losses sustained during the siege of 1565 rendered the pashas, the janissaries, and the Othoman navy averse to renew the enterprise.
The Knights of Malta not only carried on war with the Barbary corsairs and Othoman galleys, but they searched every corner of the land, and lurked under every cliff in the Greek islands, on the watch to capture Turkish merchant vessels. The story of many a hard-fought battle with the Barbaresques and the Othomans may be found in the annals of the Order ; but very few allusions are made to their daily plunder of merchant ships, and their kidnapping exploits on the coasts of Greece, from which the Christian subjects of the sultan suffered more than the Mussulmans. Many Greeks were annually carried off to labour at the oar in Christian galleys; and the want of rowers was so great, that though they were not called slaves, they were guarded as carefully, and compelled to labor as constantly, as if they had been infidels or criminals.
The habitual proceedings of the naval forces of the Order were so near akin to piracy, that the grand-master was repeatedly involved in disputes with the Christians at peace with Turkey, by the manner in which the Knights openly violated every principle of neutrality. Even the naval forces of Venice were insufficient to protect the ships and possessions of the republic. Where there was danger to Venetians, there must have been certain ruin to Greeks.
The Othoman government, naturally placing more confidence in the submissive and orthodox Greeks than in the discontented and Catholic Latins, favoured the claim of the orthodox to the guardianship of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. During the sixteenth century this caused many disputes, and created a permanent irritation at the papal court. The priestly soldiers of Malta were invited by the Pope to take an active interest in the question, and the grand-master, to mark the zeal of the Order, joined his Holiness in advising the Christian powers not to spare the heretical Greeks whenever they could be made prisoners. Religious hatred was considered as good a ground of hostility as political interest, and the orthodox were consequently chained to the oar in Catholic galleys with as little compunction as Mohammedans.
Hugues Loubens de Verdalle (1581–95) became grand master at a time when the office was increasing in prestige and authority, both over its own knights and the people of Malta. The Order of the Hospital received favorable recognition, money, and new recruits after its successful defense of Malta against the Ottoman Turks in 1565. The order’s success, however, created internal tensions between the veterans and the “new” members, who rebelled against the grand master in 1581. When Verdalle became the next grand master of the order at the turn of the year, he established Malta as a sovereign state, independent of European meddling. He used art and architecture to demonstrate to his order and to the rest of Europe the power and authority of the grand master.
For 268 years the Order retained possession of the island of Malta. But in 1798 it was surrendered without a struggle by Louis de Hompesch, the "imbecile and pusillanimous" Grand Master, to the French army and fleet under Bonaparte; and this event may be considered as the commencement of the suppression of the Order as an active power. Hompesch, accompanied by a few knights, embarked in a few days for Trieste, and subsequently retired to Montpellier, where he resided in the strictest seclusion and poverty until May 12, 1805, when he died, leaving behind him not enough to remunerate the physicians who had attended him.
The great body of the knights proceeded to Russia, where the Emperor Paul nad a few years before been proclaimed the protector of the Order. On the 27th of October, 1798, a Chapter of such of the knights as were in St. Petersburg was held, and the Emperor Paul I. was elected Grand Master. This election was made valid, so far as its irregularities would permit, by the abdication of Hompesch in July, 1799.
At the death of Paul in 1801, his successor on the throne, Alexander, appointed Count Soltikoff as Lieutenant of the Mastery, and directed him to convene a Council at St. Petersburg to deliberate on future action. This assembly adopted a new statute for the election of the Grand Master, which provided that each Grand Priory should in a Provincial Chapter nominate a candidate, and that out of the persons so nominated the Pope should make a selection. Accordingly, in 1802, the Pope appointed John de Tommasi, who was the last Knight that bore the title of Grand Master.
On the death of Tommasi, the Pope declined to assume any longer the responsibility of nominating a Grand Master, and appointed the Bailiff Guevarr Luardo simply as Lieutenant of the Mastery, a title afterward held by his successors, Centelles, Busca, De Candida, and Collavedo. In 1826 and 1827, the first steps were taken for the revival of the English language, and Sir Joshua Meredith, Bart., who had been made a knight in 1798 by Hompesch, being appointed Lieutenant Prior of England, admitted many English gentlemen into the Order. But the real history of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem ends with the disgraceful capitulation at Malta in 1798. All that has since remained of it, all that now remains - however imposing may be the titles assumed - is but the diluted shadow of its former existence.
The Knights of Malta, formally known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), did not side with Hitler during World War II. In fact, the organization remained neutral during the conflict. The SMOM is a Roman Catholic lay religious order, and its primary focus has historically been on humanitarian and medical work rather than political or military involvement. There were individuals associated with the Order who had various personal affiliations and actions during the war, but these did not reflect the official stance of the organization. The Knights of Malta were more concerned with their charitable missions, providing aid and medical services, which were in line with their long-standing tradition. It's essential to differentiate between the actions of individual members and the official policies of the organization when considering historical events like World War II.
The grand chancellor is one of four high offices — grand commander, grand chancellor, grand hospitaller, and receiver of the common treasure. These positions, which hold five-year terms, make up part of the government of the order, together with councilors of the Sovereign Council, and the grand master, who is elected for 10 years. Much of the leadership was renewed during elections held in an extraordinary chapter general convened by Pope Francis in January 2023. the Order of Malta’s grand master, Fra’ John Dunlap, a Canadian lawyer who was elected prince and 81st grand master of the Order of Malta in May 2023, had led the order as lieutenant grand master since the year prior when he was appointed by Pope Francis following the sudden death of his predecessor, Fra’ Marco Luzzago. The Order of Malta had not had a grand master since the death in 2020 of Fra’ Giacomo dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto.
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