Rome, Italy, Mar 29, 2017 / 04:10 pm (CNA).- After what has been a tumultuous few months for the Order of Malta, Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager has opened up about the process of reform and the work they are currently doing to help migrants, refugees and those displaced by war and poverty.
“This crisis has been a bit challenging for me personally,” Boeselager told CNA March 29. While the order itself undergoes an intense spiritual reform after a recent crisis involving the Vatican shook up their leadership, Boeselager said, “I hope spiritual renewal will come out of it for me too.”
However, despite the difficulties the reformation of the order currently presents, the Grand Chancellor stressed the importance of staying on task, and not letting their humanitarian work, specifically with migrants and refugees, be set aside.
Boeselager spoke to CNA during a sit-down interview just over a month after outlining the order’s priorities following his reinstatement as Grand Chancellor and the resignation of their former Grand Master, Matthew Festing, at the request of Pope Francis.
Tensions in the order initially spiked after Boeselager, whose brother Georg von Boeselager was appointed a member of the Board of Superintendents of the IOR Dec. 15, was ousted from his position as Grand Chancellor in December. That prompted the Holy See to establish an investigative group to look into the circumstances surrounding his dismissal.
A public row between the order and the Holy See ensued, eventually resulting in Festing’s resignation upon the Pope’s request, the reinstatement of Boeselager as Grand Chancellor, and the appointment of a papal delegate to oversee the “spiritual reform” of the order until a new Grand Master is elected during an April 29 convocation.
In his interview with CNA, Boeselager speaks not only of the current state of the reform, but also provides some background on his own history with the order and highlights the important humanitarian work they are doing with migrants and refugees, which forms the backbone of the order’s activities.
Please read below CNA’s full interview with the Grand Chancellor:
One of the main priorities of the order that you outlined in your press conference in January was humanitarian work with migrants and refugees. Can you explain some of the initiatives the order is currently doing with migrants and refugees specifically?
The order is very much involved in the care of migrants and refugees in different parts of the world, in countries from where they come, on their way and in countries where they wish to go to. So we are active in the countries surrounding Syria: Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon, to help refugees from Syria and also, if security allows, displaced people within Syria. We are active in South Sudan, which is in a big crisis at the moment, and in other countries where there are migrants and refugees or problems of displacement of people. Often it’s internally displaced people. In Asia, in Thailand, we care for Rohingya refugees. In almost all the hotspots for migrants and refugees we are active. Here in Italy, our medical personnel serves on the Italian board to provide medical care to those saved in the Mediterranean, and in Austria, Germany, Hungry, France, we care for refugees that arrive in these countries.
Do you see any specific challenge that might arise with the increased migrant flow into Europe?
In fact at the moment, since about 12 months, the flow has reduced very much, so I don’t see at the moment a crisis of numbers in general. In the mid ’90s 0.5 percent of the population in Europe were refugees or asylum seekers and at the moment it’s 0.4 percent, so it’s less than before. I think in Europe it’s more of a crisis of leadership and communication than a crisis of receiving refugees or migrants at the moment. But that does not mean that we are not faced with a great challenge, because Africa is on the move, one can say, and we certainly need a more long-term policy to deal with the challenges which will certainly be coming.
On this point, I wanted to ask about a meeting you had last week on the situation in Libya. What were some of the major points brought up in that discussion?
The political situation in Libya is at the moment again deteriorating, and human trafficking as become a big business in Libya, and all of the parties in Libya, I think, are aware that this is an additional threat to the stability of the country. So on this issue they agree, but they are helpless to deal with it. Many migrants are held in detention centers, which recently someone compared to concentration camps. I’ve never been to one of those camps so I cannot judge by myself, but what we hear from the migrants we serve coming from Libya are terrible stories, so everything that can be done to mitigate the situation should be done. Even if the steps forward are very small, we should not give up and that’s why we try now for the third time to convene a meeting with representatives from Libya and from other international organizations to start discussing what can be done to help. We are at the moment also giving training to the Libyan coast guard. That has been discussed in our ranks for long, because normally we are very hesitant to get directly involved in military or police actions, but giving training to these people who in the future will rescue people from the Mediterranean I think is necessary, and we hope that we can build trust toward the institution in Libya so in the future we may be able to help.
In the communique you guys sent out about the meeting it said some new collaborations were discussed. What would some of these collaborations look like?
We hope that in the not-too-far future security would allow us to go into Libya and to start medical care for migrants in Libya.
Moving to the topic of the spiritual reform the Order is currently undergoing, what would you say is the ultimate goal of this reform in light of everything that has happened?
I think starting with the term ecclesia semper reformanda, we need to start with the person, personal reform and reflection on our way all the time. I think in a bigger time, steps, also institutional reforms, have to be considered. So it’s in this frame of permanent reflection; I think in Lent it’s a good time to reflect on these things. We have to look at the recent crisis, try to access where institutional weaknesses were at the base of the crisis, so it was more personal controversies which caused the crisis, and to see where we can reform the order so that we can go forward with more strength to fulfill our mission. The Holy Father has put a special focus in his letter on the First Class of the order, so those are the members of the order who have professed the three vows. Unfortunately there are only a few in the order – this is a situation we are living with for more than 200 years, so that’s not new for the order. And to see mainly what could be done or what’s necessary to allow more vocations to the First Class.
So would you say this idea of ecclesia semper reformanda was perhaps what Pope Francis had in mind when he spoke of a specifically “spiritual” reform?
Yes, yes.
What are some of the current steps being taken as this reform takes place?
The next immediate step is to elect a new successor of Fra Matthew in just four weeks, so in a month. So that’s where we concentrate on at the moment, to prepare this election. But we have already started to collect, just to collect from the order, from the membership, where they see a need for reform. We are not yet evaluating them, we are just assembling them and sorting them, and after the election we will first decide how to structure the process, which steps we take to organize the process and then start discussing issues of reform. This will take some time because we have to do it in great transparency, and transparency means communication and time so that nobody can have the impression that something is cooked in a secret kitchen.
Part of what was also mentioned in the Pope’s letter was the need to re-visit specific parts of the order’s constitution. What are the parts that might need to be changed or revised in some way?
It’s a bit early to say exactly what will come out. As the Pope mentioned, specifically the First Class, maybe something needs to be changed there, but that’s something especially the First Class members have to reflect on themselves, that’s not our matter. The recent crisis has shown some weaknesses in the check and balances and the governance, so we have to look at governance issues and I’m pretty sure that we will have to do some reforms in this regard. And maybe we have also to look at issues of training and preparation of members in the different classes, to strengthen their background.
Is there a specific outcome that you in your role as Grand Chancellor are hoping to achieve?
In my role as Grand Chancellor I see my duty to help moderate this process and trying to help to bring peace and unity in the order. So I will at the moment will help so that all these suggestions will be fairly considered and brought together, but not take a special direction, because I think that’s not my role at the moment
Moving forward, what do you see your role as? Could you possibly be elected Grand Master at the Council Complete of State April 29?
That’s fortunately impossible, because I am not a member of the First Class. The Grand Master has to be a member of the professed with solemn vows and the professed members of the order are the members who constitute the order as a religious order, and the head of the order has to be chosen from among them.
So you’ll continue as you are then?
I think this special feature will not change.
I also wanted to ask you some personal questions about your own background. Can you explain a bit of your own story and how you came into contact with the order?
My father and my mother were members of the order. My father in fact started the initiative to bring sick and handicapped to Lourdes after the Second World War. So these annual pilgrimages of my parents were part of our normal family life because it always took some preparation. With four children it took also a special moment we didn’t like so much when our parents went away for 10 days or so. Then I remember the first, most spectacular operation of the order in 1956 during the Hungarian crisis, when the order started to rescue refugees coming from Hungry and the Hungarian-Austrian border. Our dining room and the office of my father were the same room, and my father coordinated the interventions from Germany. So I still remember this as a very specific time in my youth, so the order was part of my youth. After my military service I went for the first time to Lourdes a bit sceptical, like sometimes children are when they are doing something their parents have done all the time. So I was observing a bit, and then (as I was) serving in front of the bath in Lourdes, one of the helpers in the bath came out and said ‘I need help inside’ and just dragged me in without asking. So I came into a cabin where the really severely (sick people) were taken into the bath and there were two Dominican fathers who literally kissed the sore bones of the sick and that really took me. Since then I have gone every year perhaps with one exception.
So you would say this was really the moment that inspired you to make a greater commitment with the Order of Malta?
Yes, absolutely. Lourdes is, I would say, the spiritual heart of the order. If you talk of reform, I think the experience of Lourdes for many members is a real source of renewal. Reform is not a theoretical process. Reform has as a condition personal renewal and reform, and I think Lourdes is the deepest source for us and for me too.
Is there a sense of personal renewal that you are hoping for moving forward?
I think this crisis has been a bit challenging for me personally, and I hope spiritual renewal will come out of it for me, too.
Anian Christoph Wimmer contributed to this report.
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The ZdK’s what’shername says that Cardinal Woelke’s action is “beyond incomprehensible.” Well, he/she/it at least got that right. What is beyond comprehensible IS comprehensible!
Butt, what is really “incomprehensible” is why der Synodal Weg was awarded seats at the Vatican Synod (!) in Rome, when the Vatican previously identified der Synodal Weg as a “non-synod.” Also incomprehensible is how the underlying (and lying?) abuse in Germany is the mixed voting structure (a “backwardist” echo of France’s 1789 Tennis Court Oath!)–and how this capitulation became a template for the expanded Synod (now non-synod?) in Rome.
The archbishop of Cologne is “beyond incomprehensible”…such a robotic comment echoes the days immediately following German liberation (World War II):
When Dr. Konrad Adenauer again had been made mayor of (the same) Cologne, British leftists ejected him from his office under the (written) pretext that he (incomprehensibly!) “lacked the qualifications to run a city as large as Cologne” (von Kuenelt-Leddhin, “Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse,” 1974, p 325).
Adenauer soon became chancellor of a West Germany (1949-1963) restored as a valued member of the civilized world.
Adenauer also is remembered for this prophecy about today: “In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity.”
What has happened now within the Church in Germany–except for Cologne and a few other pockets of functional memory? And, might history sort of repeat itself? “God is full of surprises!”
Hitler on the Left? The Right owns him!!!
No, your assumption is a myth of leftist renditions of false history, a lie repeated by intellectuals to exonerate the left of its biggest sin. The left is rooted in the moral nihilism that gave rise to Naziism as well as all totalitarian states and, as the Church in Germany proves, Germany has never fully removed itself from moral nihilism post Naziism. Anti-Christianity merely morphs into different socially acceptable forms. And the moral nihilism of liberal democracies are too corrupt with their own depravities to have ever noticed.
Nazi means National Socialism. Hitler was a Socialist.
Antifa and the summer of 2020.
No, the Left ‘owns’ Hitler. Ceded by poseurs who were taken aback by the violence.
The Church can no more ‘bless’ sodomy that it can deny Christ.
Read your history please. National Socialism….🙄
Its not what’s in the spelling, darling. Nor in the acronym. Its what the group represents in reality.The Nazi’s were totalitarians, no matter what initials you give them.
Hitler’s Germany is almost a hybrid accident of history, all pointing to his inevitable rise on the shoulders of Luther’s individualism (a central aspect of sola Scriptura versus Tradition which includes the writing of scripture). Disintegrating individualism seeks a magnet. I quote from one of von Kuenelt-Leddhin’s earlier pieces (“Liberty OR Equality,” 1952, 394 pages with 990 fine-print footnotes). He concludes a later chapter in italics:
“It is the combination [!] of the degenerative process of Protestantism with Catholic absolutism and extremism [meaning absolutes] which became such a dangerous mixture [in Germany]” (p. 232). Perfect tinder for the rise of the Hitler messiah. Railing in part, it is true, against the crushing burden of reparations under the Versailles Treaty (which all parties were willing to review, except decimated France which, itself, in order to keep from going under, needed the resource shipments of the Ruhr Valley).
The above quote/finding is preceded by a fascinating figure delineating the “Genealogy of National Socialism.” It looks like a pinball machine with Waldo, Morsiglio, Wycliffe, the Hussites and Lollards at the very top, then mostly centering on Luther, and then a cobweb of interacting influences—finally nine vertical lines all converging on National Socialism. Near the middle, Calvin/Knox/Anglicanism drops off the chart, as does modern capitalism (but interactive Marxism proceeds through Socialism/Communism, and filters into National Socialism, alongside radical democracy the French Revolution. But largely Luther—in tinder box Germany.
Statistically, the author also displays supporting maps, very detailed voting districts, of the religious (Protestant and Catholic) distribution and voting results in 1932 and 1934. Nazi predominance and Catholic concentrations (primarily Bavaria in the south and very Western Germany) are inverse of each other. The concentration of Communist votes is also least in Bavaria (which incidentally was the homeland of Pope Benedict XVI).
Many pointy-headed academicians are anesthetized by mutually favorable peer reviews, and therefore are too often clueless about the deeper and spiritual currents of history. The Land O’Lakes Declaration illustrates.
I agree that Erik Von Kuenelt-Leddhin was more than an astute historian and political philosopher. And the young, indoctrinated into simplistic notions of a political spectrum designed to keep them from understanding the origins of evil, would do well to accomplish an effective quick path to a truthful understanding of history after reading his book “Leftism.”
Wondering why you felt it necessary’s to criticize “such a robotic comment the author of the article?
For 2,000 years the Catholic Church followed Christ to say sodomy is sinful. If Synods of People now try to “bless” sin by calling sin “love,” it’s illogical to think a serious minded same-sex couple would trust the Church. Inventing a ritual that violates Sacred Scripture and Tradition today would not prevent that Church from changing their mind again.
This has always been about an angry power grab. It’s purpose is suicidal.
Unfortunately, there is little resolve to fight back against the tide of deconstructing the Church illustrating how paper thin the faith has been in the lives of millions. When a pope repeatedly insists that mercy mercy mercy can be construed exclusively in terms of exonerating sinners from guilt while mercilessly ignoring the victims of sin, exactly like the wacko liberal “moral theologians” of the silly seventies “rethinking” moral precepts, and many Catholics are more willing to get hostile towards those who say moral relativism is wrong because it is an offense to God and humanity than say the Pope is wrong, we know the spirit of Luther and the reality of Satan are alive and active throughout our Church.
Excellent.
The GAY Lobbyist will never stop, it is what they do. Gays will not be good Catholics period. Forcing acceptance allows them another achievement to avoid recognition of their sins. In American we have been forced to accept and now being forced to accept children as gay. Children need crossing guards to cross the road but some how they are capable of claiming homosexuality. Rampant sexual diseases can’t even stop them. Catholic Church is the last challenge, so they’re putting everything they have into changing the faith. It will then be rolled out worldwide. The Pope needs strength to see the big picture and how they are using Germany. Pray for the Pope that he can see through this game and the sinful nature of these people.
Poor thin Cardinal Woelki and maybe a couple other guys pulling at the rope for orthodox practice. They have no chance in a tug of war versus all those enormous prelates on the sodomy side. Just think of Cardinal Marx at the rear with the rope around his Eminence, digging in for all the friends he has “blessed.” It’s not very sporting.
What do all these things have in common?
– Paschale the Anti-pope.
– Martin Luther
– WWI
– WWII
– V II (inculcating the “spirit” of the Council)
– Klaus Schwab
– The massive influx of Syrian Refugees across Europe
Give up?? (By #2 above, you should have known. Feel free to add to my list.)
As a devout Catholic of mixed German-Austrian ethnicity, I get your point. I earlier replied to this idea with reference to Roger Scruton’s (British philosopher and commenter on moral culture) concern about Germany and her people. He considered the nation had not effectively mourned their loss nor acknowledged or recompensed its past moral failures.
OTOH, ought we neglect the good people and God-given blessings from Germany? Think of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (who died at Auschwitz), St. Hildegard of Bingen, St. Bruno (founder of Carthusian order), Albert Magnus (teacher of St. Aquinas)!
Many good inventors and scientists (e.g., Einstein) were of German origin. German manufactured goods are usually of long-lasting quality (cf. goods from China). The great orthodox Catholic philosopher von Hildebrand and preacher Bonhoeffer spoke courageously against crimes and moral degradation of Naziism, at great personal loss. Think of the greatness of Beethoven’s art.
VCII did not go awry simply because of Germany! Rome had influence too! Paul VI hailed from Italy as did John XXIII. And Bugnini.
Thank God the Holy Spirit has retired because of His Long Age and exhaustion and has passed the legacy of its Gifts and His Wisdom and Love to several German women and her ampulous priests friends. I was concerned about the transition but now I see that the Holy Church can be at ease and in peace. These folks know better than anybody else what the Church needs to do to lose every single faithful on Earth at speedlight and to turn Jesuschrist’s eternal words into fluffy slogans.
Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki is a remarkable standout in the Catholic Church; he resists the Vatican, as well as the most radical Leftist national Catholic majority in the world. It seems His Holiness fears him, since he had been accused of unproved allegations of mishandling clerical abuse and remained defiant claiming innocence. Many others might have buckled.
We may see in Woelki, Strickland, certainly Vigano, perhaps Cordileone to name a few who will form a proactive counter movement to the irresistible tide of error fomenting from the Vatican in the guise of enlightenment. The real deal on Christ’s true nature. As if, as Card Walter Kasper has articulated his ideations, Jesus now has misgivings on the efficacy of the crucifixion. Has changed his mind. And is in agreement with His Holiness’ doctrine. The one fervently protected by his personally appointed defender of the faith, DDF perfect Card Víctor Fernández. Looks like rough sailing ahead. I’ve always loved storms.
Feasts Sts Cosmas and Damien, twin martyr physicians who would have looked at those who persecuted them with the eyes and heart of The Lord , pleading -‘ Lord deliver them from the demonic powers , generational spirits …to turn to You with trust and gratitude for being forgiven ,for the price You paid for same, we too love and forgive them with Your Love and mercy ..’ -good Patrons for those who have become blinded to trust that The Lord can bring deliverance and healing , in bringing wounded occasions unto The Mother to be united with her sorrows , for the Holy Spirit Love to be poured forth , unto generational lines too that often succumbed to carnal kingdoms of lusts and power , also accept the Fatherly blessing of the Holy Father that he/ The Church does not judge any one as being beyond God’s grace and mercy to live in holiness and chastity , its joy and peace ..for here and hereafter .
More of the access and awareness of the Divine Will teachings too possibly a powerful antidote ..
Why has this ‘situation’ been permitted to go on for so long? We all know that the blessing of same-sex unions will never be permitted. Why have those who have promoted this in the Church, not been silenced? What about the sin of scandal?