(Rivista
Internazionale - December 1999: The Sovereign Order in the world- 1/2)
The Sovereign Order in the World
The Audience of the Diplomatic Corps
The Order of Malta
proposes itself as
mediator
among States
"The Order of Malta is willing to propose itself as a mediator whenever States turn to it to solve their differences".
H.M.E.H. the Prince and Grand Master, Fra’ Andrew Bertie, solemnly affirmed this on 12 January, in the Magistral Church of Santa Maria on the Aventine, during his traditional meeting for exchanging New Year’s greetings with the 150 diplomats from over 80 countries accredited with the Order. The "Order’s diplomatic scope" he continued, "is anyway closely linked with its welfare mission and this helps us better to organise our humanitarian action. In this way we can present ourselves to the international community as impartial, neutral and apolitical".
The Grand Master then took his cue from the Order’s nonacentenary – celebrated this year because it was founded in 1099 in Jerusalem by Blessed Gerard – to recall that the Order’s commitments to the populations persecuted and deprived of everything because of wars or natural disasters have intensified and been even more carefully planned with these celebrations; celebrations launched in Malta in December last with a gathering in which almost 1000 knights participated. The various co-ordination bodies have been improved. Both those already existing, such as the Emergency Corps in Europe (ECOM), and a new one, created in the wake of the recent reform of the Constitutional Charter, AIOM, co-ordinating the Order’s international action worldwide in the health field under the leadership of the Grand Hospitaller. Not to forget the first to be established, CIOMAL, which has for many years been responsible for looking after lepers and which now also assists mothers and children affected by AIDS.
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| Rome.
Magistral Villa on the Aventine Hill. H.M.E.H. the Prince
and Grand Master, Frà Andrew Bertie with the members of the
Sovereign Council during the solemn audience for the Diplomatic Corps
to give their greeting.
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However, the Order, as the Grand Master stressed, has been busy not only in the welfare and health fields but has also recently started working to defend equally precious assets for humanity, starting with the right to life. For this it considers itself "in the front line with the Holy Father in condemning capital punishment and those theories which attempt to justify the elimination of human life with abortion or euthanasia". And in its defence of life it "has participated with conviction in the conference during which an International Court of Justice was created in Rome last summer".
A presence therefore, that of the Order of Malta in the world, which is equally divided between welfare, fruit of its hospitaller origins, and its commitments as supranational and sovereign State. An example was the recent Gathering in Malta, during which the Grand Chancellor of the Order, Amb. Count Marullo di Condojanni, signed with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Malta, Fenech Adami, an agreement for granting the Order that Fort Sant’Angelo where the Knights shed their blood in the 16th century to repulse the Ottoman forces. "A very significant event," the Grand Master stressed, "that does not change the international legal position of our sovereign institution but provides the Order of Malta with a territorial base which will probably offer spiritual and professional training and a centre for co-ordinating and distributing the Order’s humanitarian and charitable actions all over the Mediterranean". All this occurs two centuries after the loss of Malta due to Napoleon and precisely in the year in which the Order enters its tenth century of life.