Pope Leo XIV, in a message to the Order of Malta, underlined the order’s religious character, stressing that without evangelisation, the knights’ service to the poor is merely philanthropy. Source: CNA.
“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 organisation 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 Monday.
In his June 24 message, Leo pointed multiple times to the order’s important dual purpose of “uitio fidei and obsequium pauperum. (Latin for “protection of faith” and “service to the poor.”)
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is both a lay religious order of the Church and a sovereign state subject to international law.
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.
Pope Leo addressed the Order of Malta’s “path of renewal,” stressing that it “cannot be simply institutional, normative: It must first of all be interior, spiritual, because this gives meaning to changes in the rules.”
He supported changes to the order’s constitutional charter and law as “necessary, as several things needed to be clarified, especially the nature of the religious order.”
The Pope’s message also talked about the means – economic and personnel that the order relies on in order to carry out its charitable work – and the importance of these aligning with the group’s mission.
“To achieve a good goal the means must be good; but in this field temptation can easily present itself under the guise of good, as an illusion of being able to achieve the good goals that one sets out with means that could later prove not to be in accordance with the will of God,” he said.
The order’s international importance and position as a sovereign body, Leo continued, must never be a pretext for succumbing to temptations to worldliness.
FULL STORY
Pope Leo XIV tells Order of Malta there is no charity without evangelisation (By Hannah Brockhaus, CNA)