Reception hosted by the Order of Malta

Reception hosted by the Order of Malta
Villa del Priorato di Malta, Aventine Hill, 28 June 2015

His Excellency Fra' Duncan Gallie, Member of the Sovereign Council of the Order, on behalf of His Most Eminent Highness the Prince and Grand Master Fra Matthew Festing, who ordered that this reception be held in honour of my appointment as the Ninth Metropolitan Archbishop of Sydney and of my forthcoming reception of the pallium from Pope Francis;

Other holders of high office, chaplains, confreres and consouers of the Sovereign Military Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, including my friend Fr Anthony Robbie;

Your Eminence, Edwin O'Brien, Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre; Your Grace, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Vatican Secretary for Foreign Relations; Your Lordships, Terry Brady, Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, and Peter Elliott, Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne; Very Rev. Vincent Lu Ha OP representing the Master of the Order of Preachers Very Rev. Bruno Cadoré OP, with several other Dominicans including Fathers Kevin Saunders OP, Prior Provincial of the Order of Preachers in Australia, Anthony Walsh OP, Prior of Sydney, Martin Grandinger OP, Prior of Vienna, Fr John Cunningham OP, Prior of San Clemente, Richard Finn OP, Novice Master of England, and Denis Hallinan OP, of the Apostolic Penitentary;

Very Reverend Fathers Peter Williams, Administrator of the Diocese of Parramatta, and Gerry Gleeson, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Sydney, with the Business Manager Mr Michael Digges and several chancery staff;

Professor Hayden Ramsay and Margot Kearns on behalf of the University of Notre Dame Australia;

My beloved mother and father, siblings and their families, my brother clergy, fellow religious and dear seminarians, with my treasured friends and fellow pilgrims:

The idea of knights and dames continues to fascinate even as the cultural context in which they arose has passed. Mediaeval fares and even simulated battles are all the rage with people dressed in armour and engaging in mock heroics with swords and shields. Now, the Sovereign Military Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta is no creature of gothic fantasy. Since Pope Paschal II recognised this “hospitaller fraternity” in his 1113 bull Pie postulato voluntatis, they have survived as the oldest Order of Chivalry of the Church and the fourth oldest religious order – pipping even the Dominicans and Franciscans! True to its original inspiration, Pope Benedict XVI pointed out that the Order has always been characterized “by fidelity to the Church and to the Successor of Peter, and also for its non-renounceable spiritual identity, characterized by high religious ideals”. These “high religious ideals” have meant the members of the Order have, over the centuries, dedicated themselves to securing the safety of pilgrims and holy places, and caring for the victims or war and disease. That evolved, by the nineteenth century, into the dual mission of defending the faith and serving the sick poor. Instead of fighting Saracens these modern knights and dames fight physical sickness and spiritual ignorance. And it has been my honour to be associated with them as a Magistral Chaplain since 2002 and as a Conventual Chaplain ad honorem since 2003.

Some years ago, while I was a student in England, I was invited to join a pilgrimage to the Tower of London. I was glad to do so, as I had wanted to visit sites associated with my name-saint St John Fisher, that great friend of St Thomas More and the only Catholic bishop martyred for faith in the English Reformation. To our shame the best of the Dominican friars fled the country with the nuns at that time; the worst stayed behind, defected and sought preferment in the new regime. The beheaded Fisher was replaced as Bishop of Rochester by the former Prior of Blackfriars London, who tried to draw everyone he could with him, though in at least one case he failed.

The reason I was asked to join the gathering at the Tower was that exception. That day the Order of Malta and the Order of Preachers were together honouring one who had been both a Knight of Malta and a Dominican tertiary at Oxford, and since I was chaplain to the Oxford Dominican laity I was invited to take part. Our hero was Adrian Fortescue, a married man with a family, Knight of realm as well as of Malta, and the leading Dominican layman. He was a pious man: in the Bodleian Library is a book written in Fortescue's own hand which includes his favourite proverbs such as “Be bythe at thy meat, devout at thy Mass”. We also have his own account of the great Requiem Mass he organised by celebrated for his dear departed first wife Anne, sung by no fewer than 46 priests and of the monumental tomb he had carved for her at Blackfriars in London. Such Masses and tombs tell of wealth and position; but as a Knight of Malta Adrian was sworn to use that privilege not only for himself and his family but for the poor and sick. In his book he wrote: “A man may be of good kin, yet himself of little worth.”

By the early 1530s “the King's great matter” was rending the English church and society asunder. As Sir Adrian wrote: “A king seeking treason shall find it in his land. When the fault is in the head, the member is oft sick.” Adrian's well-known refusal to sign was a great aggravation to the King whose boyhood friend and adult Privy Councillor he had been and for whom Adrian had fought valiantly in France. But it was also an embarrassment to the generally compliant aristocracy and clergy. I trust that today's Knights of Malta are equally heroic in the face of contrary public opinion. At this time in our civilisation when the very definition of marriage is again up for grabs, the mettle of us all will be tested.

In 1539 Adrian was charged with heresy and treason, supposedly because he had struck out of his missal the instruction to pray for the King as Supreme Head of Church. He was put in Tower, attainted without evidence or trial, and by order of Parliament summarily executed. He was eventually beatified with my imagined great-great-great-great-grand uncle St John Fisher.

So that day we gathered, a fester of friars in mediæval habits, a platoon of Maltese knights in equally exotic attire, all outdoing the beefeaters and delighting the Japanese tourists no end. We gathered in the cell that might have been Blessed Adrian's, at the chopping block where he lost his head, and then in the mediæval priory of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta for a Mass of Thanksgiving. I trust that the members of our Order still teach as Blessed Adrian wrote in his keepsake book: “Obey well the good Kirk and thou shalt fare the better. He that dreads not God shall not fail to fall.” My thanks to the Grand Master and the members of the Order for this evening's celebration.