Knights of Malta - 900 anniversary

Knights of Malta processing towards the Basilica of St Peter's.

The Knights of Malta, one of the most peculiar organizations in the world, marked its 900th birthday last Saturday with a colorful procession through St. Peter's Square, a Mass in the basilica and an audience with Pope Benedict XVI, himself a member of the onetime chivalrous order drawn from Europe's nobility. It turned out to be one of the last official functions led by the Pope before he announced his surprised resignation on Monday February 11.
The Knights are at once a Roman Catholic religious order, an aid group that runs soup kitchens, hospitals and ambulance services around the globe, and a sovereign entity that prints its own passports and enjoys diplomatic relations with 104 countries — yet has no country to call its own. Some 4,000 people processed through St. Peter's Square and into the basilica for the Mass marking the 900th anniversary of the order's recognition by the Holy See. Pope Benedict thanked the order for its service and urged it to continue providing health care for the world's neediest while staying true to its Christian ideals. The order's work, he said, "is not mere philanthropy but an effective expression and a living testimony of evangelical love."

The order traces its history to an 11th century infirmary in Jerusalem set up by a monk to care for pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. During the Crusades, as the order's humanitarian efforts spread, it took on a military role to protect pilgrims and Christendom as a whole from Muslim attacks. In February 1113 Pope Paschal II recognized the order with a papal bull establishing its sovereign status by saying it was independent of both lay and other religious authorities. The order's international legal status is entirely unique, a sovereign entity that prints its own stamps, coins, license plates and passports, yet has no territory over which it rules. Its forces once occupied Cyprus, Rhodes and Malta, but Napoleon expelled the order from Malta in 1798. Nonetheless they will always be known as the Knights of Malta.