The papal meeting included the Lieutenant of the Grand Master Fra’ Marco Luzzago, as well as the papal delegate Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi, who is overseeing the drafting of the new constitution.
In a statement following the Feb. 26 meeting, Tomasi said that the participants in the meeting had presented to Pope Francis how the proposed reform “maintains and better frames the order in its characteristic of a religious lay order and allows for the continuation of its charitable, diplomatic, and humanitarian action.”
Tomasi said that Pope Francis had granted the Order of Malta another audience, after which the pope will decide on the projects they have presented to him.
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta, as it is officially known, is both a lay religious order of the Catholic Church and a subject of international law. In 2017, Pope Francis ordered reforms of both the order’s religious life and its constitution.
The reform entered a decisive stage in January, when a leaked draft of the order’s new constitution appeared to reveal that the order would be made a subject of the Holy See — a provision that critics said could jeopardize the order’s sovereignty and its bilateral relations with 112 states, as well as its permanent observer status at the United Nations.
But after talks with a Vatican delegate, the order’s Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager said he had been assured that the order’s sovereignty and right of self-governance were not in danger.
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