Pope to Order of Malta: After the Divisions, It Is Time for Concord

Vatican News ^ | 1/25/23 | Alessandro de Carolis

[marshmallow]

Pope Francis sends a message to the General Chapter of the Order of Malta, called to live in fidelity to the new Constitutional Charter.

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is holding an extraordinary Chapter General with 111 members called to elect - under the chairmanship of the Lieutenant Grand Master Fra' John Dunlap and Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi, the Pope's special delegate - the Grand Commander, the Grand Chancellor and the other top positions, on the basis of the new Constitutional Charter and the new Codex Melitense.

Challenge to the worldly mentality

Marking the event, Pope Francis sent a message to the order. His reflection on this new journey of the Order opens with his thanks to the members for their "almost millenary" work, carried out in the humanitarian, medical and social fields and which today counts Lampedusa, "with migrants who have fled their countries", and Ukraine and surrounding areas "for those fleeing war", among its main poles of activity. "To build a more just world, there is no other road than that of the Gospel," the Pope writes, and of "great merit," he acknowledges, "is your work of consoling the afflicted, both in their spiritual and material needs. The Pope adds that this is just as the challenge against "the worldly, selfish and today consumerist mentality" belongs to you, to be faced "with your exemplarity of life and your works of mercy".

Unity in the Rule

Pope Francis emphasised that this heritage of charity needs a coherence of life with the Gospel and with the rules of the Order, because "without faith" those same works "would only be philanthropy". Coherence today, on the threshold of the new course, passes in particular, for all members of the First, Second and Third Class of the Order, from observing in personal and community........

[Srednik]

Read surrender.