Chastened Knights

The Knights of Malta are historically men of privilege and resiliency. After their emergence during the 12th century as a crusading order of warrior-clerics, they built up strong dynasties in Palestine, Rhodes and Malta successively; it took Napoleon's army to end their temporal dominion in 1798. For the last century and a half, they have devoted themselves to works of charity. Although most of them are now laymen, the highest degree of the Knights, as always, has been bound by religious vows, and membership in the order, for all except the lowest category, has been restricted to men of noble blood. In memory of their past sovereignty, the Knights are recognized as an independent state by the Vatican and 13 countries.

Last week the Vatican, after making a long study of the Knights and their modern works, decided that their resiliency and their good name would profit if some of the old privileges were taken away. More than a year after its first meeting (TIME. Jan. 28, 1952), a tribunal headed by Nicola Cardinal Canali. himself a Knight, quietly told the order to revise its constitution. The changes ordered: 1) some 20 "Professed" Knights, bound by religious vows, must start living something like the communal life of a religious order, 2) the higher degrees of Knights need no longer be of noble birth, 3) a Vatican control committee will hereafter audit the Knights' finances.

The immediate cause of the changes was some cases of unchivalrous black-marketeering. In 1946, a shipment of penicillin, ordered in the U.S. by an unnamed representative of the Knights, turned out to contain not only drugs but radios and other luxury goods, which the Knights' diplomatic immunity had got past Italian customs. Not long afterward, five shiploads of Argentine wheat, intended for the Knights' charitable institutions, went astray. Though the Vatican concedes that the Knights were duped by "four or five adventurers," and though the order recovered the cost of the grain, the Pope set up a tribunal of inquiry.

Last week, after many protests, the Knights formally accepted the tribunal's findings. The changes, besides clearing up the order's reputation, may bring the Knights some added resources. With the nobility qualifications abolished, Americans may now be admitted to the two higher grades of Knights of Justice (Professed Knights) and Knights of Honor and Devotion.* Said a Vatican official: "Had it continued to exclude blood other than blue blood, [the order] would have been bound to extinction."

*Among the 464 U.S. members of the Knights of Grace, the order's lowest category: Henry Ford II, Notre Dame Football Coach Frank Leahy, Francis Cardinal Spellman.

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