Can we all now just call out these filthy Romans for setting up whom we have always known is their real target?

And it is this last element that is the most newsworthy in the statement released this evening by the Order. As Settimo Cielo had correctly reported, Pope Francis has in effect granted the Order the faculty of proceeding according to its constitutions concerning its interim regency - now assumed by the Grand Commander of the Order, Fra' Ludwig Hoffmann von Rumerstein - and the appointment of the new Grand Master. So the “pontifical delegate” will neither replace nor overlap the legitimate governance of the Order, as many had hoped or feared. Instead he will accompany it with the task of “spiritual” guide. A task, that is, very similar to the one that already belongs by statute to the cardinal patron.

The decapitation inflicted by Pope Francis on the Order of Malta is therefore twofold. Because what is falling is not only the head of Grand Master Festing, but also, de facto, that of cardinal patron Raymond Leo Burke. Meaning the ones who had brought about the removal of Boeselager in the certainty that they were thereby putting into practice the mandate entrusted to them by the pope, in a December 1 letter to Burke: to “promote the spiritual interests of the order and remove any affiliation with groups or practices that run contrary to the moral law.”