Pope Francis "takes over" Sovereign Military Order of Malta

[Crumpets]

Apparently a dispute arose over the Knights of Malta distributing condoms in Myanmar.

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While this may seem like a minor matter, the Knights of Malta are, effectively, a fully sovereign group under international law. Admittedly, I know very little about their full legal standing, but this seems like pretty big overreach from the Vatican.

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-pope-knights-malta-20170125-story.html

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's hard to tell from the article whether the ostensible reasoning here is that the Knights as a whole were too hardline about condoms or not hardline enough, but either way it strikes me as an excuse given that Francis has had fraught relations with them for a number of reasons.

[Zioneer]

Grandmaster Francis, technically? I can dig it.

But seriously, it seems that he has every right to take it over, even if such a thing hasn't been done in centuries. It will be interesting to see how he reforms it.

[Lord Halifax]

It's hard to tell from the article whether the ostensible reasoning here is that the Knights as a whole were too hardline about condoms or not hardline enough, but either way it strikes me as an excuse given that Francis has had fraught relations with them for a number of reasons.

Could you elaborate on that?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's hard to tell from the article whether the ostensible reasoning here is that the Knights as a whole were too hardline about condoms or not hardline enough, but either way it strikes me as an excuse given that Francis has had fraught relations with them for a number of reasons.

Could you elaborate on that?

Some of the reasons are mentioned in the article. Another is that the Knights tend to be liturgically conservative, and while that's not one of Francis's main issues he does appear to share a distaste for it with a lot of his allies within the Church. (I wish liturgy was less politicized within the Catholic Church.)