Heads Roll At The Vatican Over Missionary Condom Scandal
A
public showdown over condoms and the firing of a Knights of Malta
missionary has made Pope Francis as mad as … well, as he gets.
Barbie Latza Nadeau
01.25.17 9:11 PM ET
ROME
— The Knights of Malta Prince and Grand Master position was supposed to
be a job for life. At least that’s what Matthew Festing, the
67-year-old Briton who has held the role for the last nine years,
thought until Pope Francis sacked him this week after a very public battle of wills, and won’ts, over condoms.
The scandal, which could be (and might be) the premise of the next Dan Brown novel, started last month when Festing fired the order’s Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager.
It
seems Boeselager, a German, concealed the fact that one of the two
Catholic missions offering medical assistance to sex slaves in Myanmar,
which he oversaw on behalf of the Knights of Malta, doled out condoms as
a part of its medical services.
According to UNAIDS (PDF),
in 2014 about 220,000 people in Myanmar were HIV-infected and about
11,000 died that year of related illnesses. Free condom distribution is a
“mainstay” of the fight against HIV/AIDS among all sex workers, and de
facto sex slaves are, of course, even more vulnerable.
But
the members of the Knights of Malta, while they are not full clerics,
do take the usual strict vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience to the
Catholic Church, which prohibits the use of birth control for any
reason, even to stop the spread of a fatal epidemic.
The
Sovereign Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of
Malta (the Knights’ full formal name) dates back to the Crusades and is
under the Vatican structure. Its 13,500 members, 25,000 employees and
80,000 volunteers, are compelled to follow the rules set forth by the
Holy See.
But the question here has become, precisely, not who makes those rules, but who enforces them?
Boeselager was understandably not happy about being fired. And, according to the Knights’ own website, his dismissal wasn’t smooth by any standard.
After
it was discovered that Boeselager had been hiding the trail of the
condom handouts, two missions were shut down (a third was left open to
avoid creating a vacuum in medical services), and he was asked by
Festing to resign, which he refused to do.
“After
Boeselager refused this, eventually the Grand Master [Festing] had no
choice but to order him, under the Promise of Obedience, in presence of
the Grand Commander and the Cardinal Patronus, to resign,” the Knights’
press statement reads. “Boeselager refused again. Thus, the Grand
Commander, with the backing of the Grand Master and the Sovereign
Council and most members of the Order around the world, initiated a
disciplinary procedure after which a member can be suspended from
membership in the Order, and thus all Offices within the Order.”
Boeslager
then went to the pope himself, complaining that he’d been let go under
what he said were unreasonable circumstances and that he was surely
following the teachings of Francis when it comes to mercy and
ministering to those in the margins who may or may not be able to uphold
all the tenets of Catholicism.
Francis
apparently agreed. He appointed a five-member commission to investigate
the Knights of Malta matter, specifically the circumstances of the
firing—and the pope’s decision was met with an astonishing rebuke.
Citing their own constitution, the Grand Magistry of the Sovereign Council of the Knights of Malta issued a statement outlining why they were essentially saying no to the pope and his secretary of state.
“The
Grand Magistry of the Sovereign Order of Malta has learnt of the
decision made by the Holy See to appoint a group of five persons to shed
light on the replacement of the former Grand Chancellor. The
replacement of the former Grand Chancellor is an act of internal
governmental administration of the Sovereign Order of Malta and
consequently falls solely within its competence. The aforementioned
appointment is the result of a misunderstanding by the Secretariat of
State of the Holy See,” the statement said. “The Grand Master
respectfully clarified the situation yesterday evening in a letter to
the Supreme Pontiff, laying out the reasons why the suggestions made by
the Secretariat of State were unacceptable.”
Clearly, the pope did not see it quite that way.
Shortly afterward, the Vatican issued its own statement of clarification.
“For the support and advancement of this generous mission, the Holy See
reaffirms its confidence in the five Members of the Group appointed by
Pope Francis on 21 December 2016 to inform him about the present crisis
of the Central Direction of the Order, and rejects, based on the
documentation in its possession, any attempt to discredit these Members
of the Group and their work,” the statement said. “The Holy See counts
on the complete cooperation of all in this sensitive stage, and awaits
the Report of the above-mentioned Group in order to adopt, within its
area of competence, the most fitting decisions for the good of the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta and of the Church.”
The Knights of Malta didn’t budge, refusing to cooperate with the papal group.
That’s
when Francis decided that Festing had to go and called him in to ask
for his resignation which, according to a spokesman for the Knights of
Malta, he willingly gave. The Vatican will now assign an interim leader
until the Knights of Malta hold their own election for Festing’s
replacement.
While it may all seem
medieval and Machiavellian, even for Rome, there is another wrinkle—and a
distinctly American one—in this rather unholy thread.
The head of the Sovereign Council of the Knights of Malta is none other than Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, an American who is leading a campaign
against Pope Francis for allegedly giving the impression that rules on
divorced and remarried Catholics and LGBT Catholics have softened.
Burke and three other cardinals filed a list of dubia, or doubts, to Pope Francis and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about the pope’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love).
Burke was given his gig as Cardinalis Patronus of the Knights of Malta in 2014 after Francis fired him from his lofty job as head of the Vatican’s judiciary.
Francis has refused to answer the dubia,
essentially drawing a line in the sand on the matter. Whether or not
the Knights of Malta mess is Burke’s attempt at revenge or to embarrass
the pope is a matter of conjecture. But this much is crystal clear:
pissing off the pope has consequences.
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