Pope to Order of Malta: works a sign of Christian hope
11/02/2013Pope addressing Order of Malta
Pope Benedict XVI received a group of Knights and Dames of Malta, as part of celebrations marking the 900th anniversary of the creation of their organization as a Sovereign Military Order under Papal protection. It was on the 15th of February, in the year 1113, that Pope Paschal II issued the Bull Pie Postulatio Voluntatis, by which he placed the newly created “hospitaller fraternity” of Jerusalem under the protection of the Church and gave it sovereign status, constituting it as an Order in church law, with the faculty freely to elect its superiors without interference from other lay or religious authorities… Read more »