Cardinal
Raymond Burke and the Knights of Malta’s leader defied the wishes of
Pope Francis and the Holy See when they sacked a senior figure in a row
about the distribution of condoms.
Letters
seen by The Tablet reveal that Francis specifically requested no one be
dismissed in a dispute that saw Albrecht von Boeselager thrown out as
Grand Chancellor and then suspended from the Order.
The
respected German Knight was sacked on 6 December by the Knights’ Grand
Master, Matthew Festing, in the presence of the Order’s patron and
prominent conservative critic of Francis, Cardinal Burke. Both of them
had claimed that the dismissal was in “accordance with the wishes of the
Holy See”.
Boeselager,
who had previously run the Order’s charitable arm, had been accused of
distributing condoms and failing to accept Church teaching on sexual
matters - charges he strongly denies.
But now it has emerged that
Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin wrote to Festing a few days
later clarifying that the Pope did not want Boeselager sacked. As a
result, the Holy See decided to set up an investigation into the
Knights.
“I wish first of all to
reiterate that these measures [the sacking and suspension of Boeselager]
must not be attributed to the will of the Pope or his directives,” the
cardinal wrote in a letter to Festing.
“As I expressed to you in my
letter of 12 December 2016: ‘as far as the use and diffusion of methods
and means contrary to the moral law, His Holiness has asked for dialogue
as the way to deal with, and resolve, eventual problems. But he has
never spoken of sending someone away!'”
The cardinal goes on to say that
the action against Boeselager must be seen as “suspended” until the
papal commission into the saga has reported, something which will take
place at the end of this month.
In
an extraordinary statement issued before Christmas, Festing told the
Pope that the sacking of Boeselager was an internal matter and the
Secretariat of State had misunderstood the situation.
But
in his letter to the Grand Master Cardinal Parolin points out that the
Knights are a “lay religious Order” which includes “service to the
faith and to the Holy Father” and therefore the Holy See does have
authority to act in this case.
The
eleventh-century Knights are Catholicism’s oldest military Order,
running charitable initiatives across the globe - they are also treated
as a sovereign entity with diplomatic relations with countries across
the world. Festing, known by the title of “His Most Eminent Highness”,
is a quasi-head of state and treated as an honorary cardinal.
But
the row has sparked an internal crisis inside the Order which shows no
sign of abating: in a statement Boeselager says his sacking and
subsequent suspension from the Order was unconstitutional and is
threatening to use the Order’s legal system to prove his point.
The
German Knight, whose father was involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill
Hitler, says the action against him “is more reminiscent of an
authoritarian regime than one of religious obedience” .
He explained that condoms had been distributed by three projects in Myanmar without the Order’s knowledge.
“When
this was discovered in the course of routine project auditing, two of
these projects were immediately ended,” he wrote. “An immediate closure
of the third project would have led to the abrupt end of all basic
medical services in an extremely poor region of Myanmar, so this dilemma
was submitted to an ethics committee [of the Order]. Subsequently the project was closed, following a statement by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”