The Order That Survived Everything Except Reform
The transformation of the Order of Malta under Pope Francis presents, in miniature, the progressive reconstruction of the Church: Catholic identity retained in title, charitable activity enlarged, inherited authority displaced and tradition permitted to survive only when it no longer governs.
When Blessed Gerard established the hospital of Saint John in Jerusalem during the eleventh century, he did not found an international humanitarian agency adorned with religious symbols. He founded a Catholic work of mercy. The sick and the pilgrim were received as members of Christ; service to them proceeded from the Faith, was governed by the Faith and sought the glory of God. In 1113 Pope Paschal II recognised the Hospitallers as a religious order, placed them under the protection of the Apostolic See and confirmed their right freely to elect their superiors without interference from other religious or secular powers.¹
The Order survived the loss of Jerusalem. It survived expulsion from Rhodes after resisting the armies of Suleiman the Magnificent. It survived the Great Siege of Malta, the seizure of the island by Napoleon, the loss of territorial dominion, revolution, exile and war. Kingdoms disappeared around it, but the Order endured because its identity was not reducible to territory. It carried that identity within itself—in its profession of the Catholic Faith, its rule, its hierarchy, its worship and its service of the poor.
Its purpose remains expressed in the words tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum: the defence of the Faith and service to the poor. The two are not rival vocations. Nor are they merely parallel activities. The service of the poor is the charitable expression of the Faith defended, while defence of the Faith ensures that charity remains recognisably Christian rather than becoming philanthropy detached from truth. The Order’s present constitutional text still declares that its purpose is the glory of God and the sanctification of its members through these two obligations, exercised “in accordance with its ancient traditions”.²
That order of principles is indispensable. The Order does not defend the Faith in one department and relieve suffering in another. It serves Christ in the poor because it first acknowledges Christ as Lord. Its charitable works derive their supernatural character from the doctrine, worship and discipline of the Church.
The recent crisis began when that relationship was reversed.
The scandal that became a struggle for control
Between 2005 and 2015, projects administered under the auspices of Malteser International became involved in the distribution of condoms, most notably in Myanmar. Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager, who had served as Grand Hospitaller and was subsequently elected Grand Chancellor, maintained that the programmes had been initiated locally without his knowledge. He said that two projects were ended after he discovered them and that a third continued temporarily because its immediate closure would also have removed essential medical care from impoverished communities.³
Those circumstances were relevant to the question of his personal culpability. They did not remove the institutional fact. An organisation operating under the authority and public identity of a Catholic religious order had distributed contraceptives in direct conflict with Catholic moral teaching.
The matter was not trivial. The Order did not exist merely to provide whatever services secular humanitarian practice considered advantageous. It existed to serve the poor within the moral order revealed by God and taught by the Church. Its charitable activity could not become exempt from the Faith merely because it was conducted in difficult circumstances or through professional agencies.
The incident exposed a danger familiar throughout Catholic institutional life. Schools, hospitals, charities and relief organisations may retain Catholic names while their practical decisions become governed by professional standards developed elsewhere. Funding expectations, government partnerships, international agencies and secular ethical norms begin to exercise the authority once exercised by Catholic doctrine. The cross remains upon the institution’s buildings and publications, but the cross no longer determines what the institution will refuse to do.
Fra’ Matthew Festing, then Grand Master, sought Boeselager’s resignation in December 2016. When Boeselager refused, he was removed from office and suspended from the Order. The Grand Magistry alleged failures of oversight and disclosure as well as refusal of obedience. Boeselager appealed to the Holy See. Pope Francis appointed a commission to investigate the circumstances of the dismissal, while the Order initially rejected the commission’s competence on the ground that the appointment and removal of its officers belonged to the internal government of a sovereign institution.⁴
The controversy immediately exceeded the fate of one official. The Order is both a Catholic religious order and a sovereign subject of international law. It is spiritually linked to the Holy See while maintaining an independent government, diplomatic relations and international legal personality. Its own official description acknowledges both aspects of this unusual constitution.⁵ The crisis therefore raised a delicate but legitimate question: where did papal authority over the Order’s religious character end, and the Order’s sovereign administration begin?
That question might have been answered through a careful distinction between religious supervision and temporal government. Instead, Pope Francis requested Festing’s resignation. Festing complied, and the Sovereign Council formally accepted his departure on 28 January 2017. The Order praised his “generous response to the request of the Holy Father”. Boeselager was restored as Grand Chancellor and resumed a central place in the government.⁶
It is possible to believe that Festing acted imprudently, that the procedure used against Boeselager was defective or that the invocation of papal wishes during his dismissal was improper. None of that alters the unmistakable outcome. The official whose period of responsibility included a serious failure of Catholic moral oversight returned to office, while the Grand Master who attempted to discipline him was removed.
The doctrinal question was not formally decided against Catholic teaching. It was displaced by questions of process, authority and institutional stability. The morality of contraception remained unchanged in theory. In practice, the man who attempted to make that morality institutionally consequential lost his office.
This distinction is essential to understanding the progressive transformation of Catholic institutions. Doctrine is seldom rejected openly. It is simply denied the power to govern. The teaching remains in the catechism, the constitution or the mission statement, but those who insist that it must produce practical consequences are represented as rigid, divisive, imprudent or administratively incapable.
The error is tolerated as a difficulty. The attempt to correct it becomes the crisis.
The displacement of traditional authority
Cardinal Raymond Burke had been appointed Cardinal Patron of the Order by Pope Francis in 2014. The Patron’s office existed to promote the Order’s spiritual interests and maintain its relations with the Holy See. Burke had been involved in the discussions preceding Boeselager’s removal and was closely identified with Festing’s insistence upon Catholic discipline.
Following Festing’s resignation, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Angelo Becciu as his special delegate. Becciu was designated the Pope’s official spokesman in relations with the Order and entrusted with its “spiritual and moral renewal”. His mandate was subsequently extended after Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre’s election as Grand Master.⁷
Cardinal Burke retained the title of Patron but no longer possessed the corresponding practical influence. The historic office remained; effective authority had migrated to an extraordinary delegate.
The arrangement was revealing. Progressive reconstruction rarely begins by abolishing an inherited office whose destruction might provoke resistance. It more often leaves the office standing while transferring its substance elsewhere. Titles, constitutional language and ceremonial precedence remain intact, allowing an appearance of continuity. Decisions are made through delegates, commissions and provisional structures whose powers arise from exceptional mandates.
The institution does not appear to have been altered because its familiar offices still exist. Yet the centre of authority has moved.
This method has become increasingly familiar in the wider Church. Episcopal government is praised, but a bishop’s freedom is constrained when he protects liturgical tradition. Synodality is invoked to enlarge the influence of committees and consultative processes, while Roman intervention is used to override decisions that depart from the approved direction. Local discernment is permitted where it relaxes discipline; central authority is imposed where it preserves inheritance.
The principle is not decentralisation or centralisation. It is control of the result.
Becciu remained special delegate until 2020, when Archbishop Silvano Tomasi succeeded him. In 2023 Pope Francis finally replaced Burke as Cardinal Patron with Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, the Jesuit canon lawyer who had played a central role in the Order’s constitutional reform.⁸ By then the marginalisation of the original Patron had become formal, and the exceptional intervention had evolved into a new permanent settlement.
From investigation to reconstruction
The intervention had begun as an attempt to resolve the dismissal of one officer. It did not end there. What followed was a prolonged revision of the Order’s constitution, its government, the place of its professed members and its relationship with the Holy See.
The official language was reassuring. The Order stated that the reform would consolidate its identity as a religious lay order, strengthen its humanitarian work and return it to the original charism of tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum.⁹ Some reform was plainly necessary. The professed Knights of Justice, who constitute the religious heart of the Order, had declined greatly in number. The relationship between the religious profession, the diplomatic government and the extensive international relief apparatus required clarification. Certain constitutional requirements had become impractical, and the Order could not rely indefinitely upon a diminishing circle of aristocratic European families for its supreme government.
Yet a reform must be judged not only by the defects it identifies, but by the authority that conducts it, the principle according to which it proceeds and the settlement it finally produces.
By 2022 even Boeselager had become alarmed by the direction of the Vatican-led process. He declined to participate in a reform working group and warned that proposals under discussion threatened the Order’s sovereignty. The irony was considerable. The official restored to office through papal intervention now feared that the same intervention had moved beyond the correction of an injustice and towards the absorption of the Order’s internal government.¹⁰
On 3 September 2022, Pope Francis brought the process to its conclusion. He promulgated a new Constitutional Charter and Melitense Code, revoked the mandates of the Order’s existing high officers, dissolved the Sovereign Council, appointed a provisional Sovereign Council and ordered an Extraordinary General Chapter. His decree was to take effect immediately, notwithstanding any law, privilege or custom to the contrary.¹¹
The importance of the act should not be obscured by canonical technicality. The Pope possesses real authority over the Order as a Catholic religious institute, especially in relation to the vows and spiritual life of its professed members. Yet the Order is also recognised as a sovereign subject of international law. The very identity of the institution depends upon the coexistence of spiritual dependence and governmental autonomy.
In 1113 Paschal II had confirmed the Order’s right freely to elect its superiors without interference from secular or religious authorities. In 2022 a pope dissolved its governing council, removed its principal officers, promulgated its fundamental law and appointed its provisional government.
The juxtaposition does not settle every canonical question, but it defines the historical magnitude of what occurred.
The constitutional changes contained provisions that could be justified. Nobiliary qualifications for the office of Grand Master and other positions were removed. The professed knights were identified more clearly as the “essential nucleus” of the Order. Government was reorganised in a manner intended to make religious profession more accessible and the institution more representative of its international membership.¹²
A Catholic judgement need not romanticise every inherited arrangement. Nobility is not sanctity, and genealogy cannot substitute for vocation. The Order’s constitution was never immune from prudent amendment. Nevertheless, the presence of genuine defects does not justify every proposed remedy, still less every method by which it is imposed.
Progressive reform characteristically begins with a valid criticism and ends by reconstructing the institution according to a different conception of its identity. A limited weakness is made to bear the weight of an unlimited programme. Aristocratic exclusivity becomes an argument not merely for widening participation, but for loosening the bonds of the historic constitution. Administrative dysfunction becomes an argument for overriding sovereignty. A disputed disciplinary act becomes the occasion for years of direct supervision. The necessity of renewal is converted into the right to impose an institutional settlement from above.
The question is not whether the Order required reform. The question is whether reform returned it more faithfully to what it had received, or trained it to understand itself through categories supplied by the modern ecclesiastical and humanitarian establishment.
Catholic reform removes corruption so that the original form may appear more clearly. Progressive reform regards the original form as part of the corruption.
A religious order permitted to remain religious only on new terms
The reformers repeatedly insisted that the professed knights must recover their central place. In itself, this was sound. The Order is not fundamentally a diplomatic service, a federation of charitable associations or a prestigious chivalric society. It is a religious order, and without the professed knights its ancient titles and international status would be deprived of their animating principle.
Yet the debate revealed uncertainty over what their religious vocation should mean. Proposals were discussed for more regularised common life and greater material support, with explicit reference to the post-conciliar theology of religious renewal.¹³ Such measures could assist genuine vocations. They could also recast the knights according to a generalised model of religious life insufficiently attentive to the peculiar character of a sovereign, lay, chivalric and hospitaller order.
The danger was that the Order would be made more conventionally religious by becoming less historically itself. Its own charism would not simply be renewed from within but translated into categories considered administratively recognisable by contemporary Rome.
This is another recurrent feature of the present ecclesial crisis. Institutions are assured that their traditions will be respected, provided those traditions are reinterpreted according to principles foreign to their formation. Priesthood remains, but is described primarily through service and collaboration rather than sacrifice and spiritual fatherhood. Religious life remains, but asceticism and separation from the world become embarrassment. Episcopal authority remains, but is diffused through processes that make decisive teaching appear autocratic. Catholic identity remains, but is increasingly measured by humanitarian effectiveness rather than confessional integrity.
The name survives. The governing conception changes.
The prohibition that revealed the whole
The clearest symbol of the Order’s transformation did not come with the dismissal of a Grand Master or the promulgation of a constitution. It came through the quiet administrative suppression of the worship under which the Order had lived for almost all its history.
On 10 June 2019, Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre instructed the presidents of the Order’s grand priories and national associations that all its liturgical ceremonies were henceforth to be celebrated according to the reformed Roman rite rather than the pre-conciliar Missal. He invoked his responsibility as “supreme guarantor of the cohesion and communion” of the Order and directed that the policy be implemented immediately.¹⁴
The restriction concerned the Order’s corporate worship. Members could continue to attend the traditional Mass privately, but the Order acting publicly as the Order could no longer celebrate according to the liturgical form that had accompanied nearly the whole of its existence.
The timing was particularly significant. Summorum Pontificum remained in force. Benedict XVI had declared that the older Missal had never been juridically abrogated and had insisted that what previous generations regarded as sacred could not suddenly be considered forbidden or harmful. He had sought an “interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church”, allowing the traditional liturgy to live openly rather than survive as a grudging exception.¹⁵
The Grand Master chose the contrary course. The Order’s ancient worship was not accommodated as part of its inheritance but excluded in the name of uniformity.
The prohibition was more than a dispute over rubrics. Liturgy is institutional memory made present. It does not merely recall what previous generations believed; it permits the present generation to worship within the same doctrinal and spiritual world. Through repeated prayer it establishes the hierarchy of truths by which an institution understands itself.
The Order’s knights had made their professions within the old Roman rite. They had heard the Roman Canon during sieges and after victories, beside hospital beds and over the graves of their brethren. The rite had formed their understanding of sacrifice, sin, judgement, grace, hierarchy, intercession and the Real Presence. It had taught them that service of the poor was not social activism but service rendered to Christ beneath the sign of His sacrifice.
Yet the Order could retain the Maltese cross, ceremonial mantles, diplomatic titles, heraldic distinctions and commemorations of its historic battles while excluding from its official life the worship that had given those things their Catholic meaning.
Tradition was preserved as pageantry and prohibited as authority.
Here the entire direction of the reform became visible. The historic inheritance was welcome while it furnished colour, prestige and institutional continuity. It became objectionable when it claimed to govern present practice. The past could be celebrated as history but not inhabited as a living norm.
This is why the traditional liturgy occupies so central a place in the wider progressive reconstruction of the Church. It cannot easily be reduced to decoration. It embodies a complete conception of Catholicism: received rather than constructed, sacrificial rather than conversational, hierarchical rather than managerial, penitential rather than therapeutic, directed towards God rather than organised around the self-expression of the assembled community.
The old Mass tells every reformer that the Church existed before his programme and will judge his programme according to what she received.
For this reason, liturgical tradition is more threatening to progressive control than heraldry, titles or historic buildings. Those things can be detached from their original meaning and assimilated into ceremony. The liturgy continues to produce Catholic memory, and Catholic memory exposes discontinuity.
The Order had survived because it carried its identity through successive territorial losses. Now it was instructed to leave a principal bearer of that identity behind.
The Church in miniature
Considered separately, each episode admits a partial defence. Boeselager may not have known initially about the distribution of contraceptives. Festing may have acted imprudently. The Pope possessed authority over the Order’s religious life. Its constitution required reform. Nobiliary restrictions were difficult to sustain. The professed vocation needed strengthening. Liturgical uniformity could be presented as a means of avoiding internal division.
The argument does not depend upon denying every qualification. It depends upon observing what the qualifications produced when taken together.
A moral failure within a Catholic charity did not lead principally to a clearer assertion that Catholic teaching must govern every charitable work. It led to the removal of the superior who attempted discipline. The Cardinal Patron associated with that discipline was left in office but deprived of practical influence. A special delegate became the effective representative of papal authority. An investigation became a constitutional reform. Reform became direct intervention. The governing council was dissolved, the fundamental law promulgated from outside and provisional officers appointed. Finally, the Order’s ancient liturgy was excluded from its public worship in the name of communion.
The sequence moved consistently in one direction. Authority passed from inherited structures to exceptional structures; Catholic discipline yielded to institutional management; sovereignty yielded to supervision; and tradition yielded to uniformity.
Only after tracing that history is it necessary to name the process.
This is what institutional capture looks like.
It does not ordinarily destroy the institution. Destruction would provoke resistance and reveal the aggressor. Capture preserves the outward body while altering what governs it. The same name appears upon the door. The same insignia are displayed. The same charitable works continue, often with considerable efficiency. The institution may even expand after capture because the parts of its mission most acceptable to the surrounding culture receive new emphasis and resources.
What disappears is the institution’s freedom to be ruled by its founding principle.
Progressivism rarely tells an ancient Catholic body that its tradition is wholly evil. It persuades the body that fidelity to its tradition is the greatest obstacle to its future. It teaches the institution to distinguish between its admirable historic spirit and the supposedly obsolete doctrines, disciplines and rites through which that spirit was actually transmitted. It preserves the language of continuity while removing the means by which continuity is maintained.
The process is visible far beyond the Order of Malta. Catholic schools retain saints’ names while teaching according to secular anthropologies. Catholic hospitals invoke compassion while setting aside moral prohibitions that distinguish Christian medicine from utilitarian care. Religious congregations maintain the memory of their founders while abandoning the habit, rule and apostolate through which their founders’ charisms were made concrete. Dioceses celebrate heritage while closing churches and restricting the liturgy that built them.
The institution survives because its social functions survive. It is judged successful because it remains busy.
Yet activity cannot establish identity. A secular agency can feed the hungry, care for refugees and administer hospitals. A sovereign chivalric order is not necessary for those works. The Order’s reason for existing is that it performs them as acts of Catholic religion, governed by Catholic truth and directed towards the supernatural good of those served.
Once obsequium pauperum is detached from tuitio fidei, the service of the poor does not disappear. It becomes the public justification for an institution whose distinctively Catholic purpose has receded. Charity is enlarged precisely because doctrine has ceased to regulate it inconveniently.
The same temptation faces the Church. The world readily applauds her when she behaves as a humanitarian organisation, a diplomatic mediator, an advocate for development or a partner in international programmes. It resists her when she speaks as the guardian of revealed truth, condemns moral error and insists that mercy cannot be separated from conversion.
The Church once converted the world because she refused to resemble it. She now struggles to convert it because too many of her institutions seek legitimacy through resemblance.
The Order that survived everything
The Order of Saint John lost Jerusalem, but it did not lose itself. It lost Rhodes after a heroic siege, but it did not lose itself. It lost Malta to Napoleon, but it did not lose itself. Territory could be taken because the Order’s true inheritance was carried in the souls, vows, worship and discipline of its members.
Its modern crisis is more dangerous precisely because it has not involved territorial conquest. No enemy fleet appeared before its walls. No sultan demanded its surrender. No revolutionary army confiscated its palaces. Its transformation occurred through investigations, commissions, appointments, constitutional texts and liturgical directives, each defended as a limited and prudent act of reform.
The Order was not commanded to repudiate its past. It was taught to retain the past as an honourable memory while ceasing to permit that memory to govern.
That is why its history since 2016 matters beyond the internal concerns of a small and distinguished religious body. The Order has become a concentrated image of what has happened throughout the Church: doctrinal failure reframed as administrative complexity, resistance represented as disorder, inherited authority displaced by exceptional mandates, centralisation exercised in the language of renewal and living tradition reduced to a private attachment.
The Order still bears the eight-pointed cross. Its members still perform works of real sacrifice, and none of this should obscure their generosity towards the sick, the displaced and the poor. But the cross upon an institution is not merely a badge of honour. It is a claim of government. It declares that every work, office, policy and reform stands beneath the judgement of Christ crucified.
The final question is therefore not whether the Order remains useful, visible or respected. It is whether the Faith still possesses the authority to determine what the Order is, what it does, how it worships and what it will refuse.
An institution is not finally conquered when it loses its territories. It is conquered when it ceases to believe that the principles for which it once surrendered territories remain binding upon its future.
The Order survived Jerusalem, Rhodes, Malta and Napoleon because it carried its identity within itself. Whether it will survive progressive reform depends upon whether that identity is still permitted to live.
The history of the Order of Malta is therefore no longer merely the history of one order. It is the history of the Catholic Church in miniature.
- Sovereign Order of Malta, “History”; Sovereign Order of Malta, “1113 Papal Recognition.”
- Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, Constitutional Charter and Code, 2022, art. 2.
- Sovereign Order of Malta, “Factsheet and Timeline: Events December 2016–January 2017,” February 2017; Catholic News Service, “WikiLeaks Releases Documents on Knights of Malta Controversy,” 31 January 2019.
- Sovereign Order of Malta, “Factsheet and Timeline: Events December 2016–January 2017,” February 2017; The Guardian, “Pope Francis’s Authority Challenged by Knights of Malta over Condom Row,” 10 January 2017.
- Sovereign Order of Malta, “About the Order of Malta.”
- Sovereign Order of Malta, “The Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing Resigns from Office,” 28 January 2017; Sovereign Order of Malta, “Declaration on Government Priorities,” 2 February 2017.
- Sovereign Order of Malta, “Pope Francis Appoints His Special Delegate to the Sovereign Order of Malta,” 6 February 2017; Sovereign Order of Malta, “Pope Francis Renews Msgr Angelo Becciu’s Mandate of Special Delegate,” 4 May 2018.
- Sovereign Order of Malta, “Archbishop Silvano Tomasi Is the New Special Delegate,” 3 November 2020; Sovereign Order of Malta, “Statement of the Grand Master on the Appointment of Cardinal Ghirlanda as New Cardinalis Patronus,” 22 June 2023.
- Sovereign Order of Malta, “The Constitutional Reform of the Sovereign Order of Malta,” 28 June 2017; Sovereign Order of Malta, “Working to Update the Constitution,” 17 November 2017.
- Catholic World Report, “Top Official Won’t Join Order of Malta Reform Working Group, Citing Threat to Sovereignty,” 20 January 2022.
- Francis, “Decree for the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta,” 3 September 2022.
- Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, Constitutional Charter and Code, 2022.
- Sovereign Order of Malta, “Cardinal Tomasi Meets Professed Members,” 9 June 2021.
- Catholic Herald, “The Big Story: Order of Malta Bans Old Mass,” 20 June 2019; Edward Pentin, “Order of Malta Head Bans Extraordinary Form of Mass,” National Catholic Register, 12 June 2019.
- Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops accompanying the apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, 7 July 2007.
RELATED ARTiCLES
LATEST ARTICLES
- Today’s Mass: October 16 St Hedwig of SilesiaHedwig of Silesia, a member of the Bavarian comital House of Andechs, was Duchess of Silesia from 1201 and of Greater Poland from 1231 as well as High Duchess consort of Poland from 1232 until 1238. She was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1267 by Pope Clement IV.
- Today’s Mass: October 15 St Teresa of AvilaSaint Teresa of Avila, born in 1515, was the reformer of the Carmelite Order and founded the Discalced Carmelites. Renowned for her mystical writings, she faced opposition while establishing numerous convents. Teresa’s deep spiritual insights and experiences led to her canonisation in 1622, and her feast is celebrated on 15 October.
- Today’s Mass: October 14 St Callistus, Bishop of Rome & MartyrCallistus was born to a Christian slave who had a Christian master in second-century Rome. He was placed in charge of a Christian bank which went broke. He fled the city, but was caught and sentenced to the treadmill, then later to the tin mines. He was later ransomed and returned to Rome…
- Sermon for St. WilfridToday marks the feast of St. Wilfrid, who was pivotal in establishing the Roman Christian tradition in England over the Irish. Born in 634 in Northumbria, he travelled to France and Italy, eventually becoming bishop of York. Despite conflicts with kings and church leaders, he successfully evangelised Sussex and laid foundations for future missions, showcasing both determination and a contentious spirit. St. Wilfrid passed away in 709, leaving a complex legacy of leadership and zeal for evangelism.
- THE GENERATION THAT WAS TOLD TO MOVE ON Is Rediscovering What the Church Left BehindArchbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s interview highlights the challenge of reconciling Catholic Tradition with contemporary practices, warning that restrictions like Traditionis custodes may deepen existing divisions. He notes younger Catholics are rediscovering traditional worship, which contrasts with the Church’s modern adjustments and emphasizes the need for reflective continuity in liturgical development.
CURRENT EDITION
Today’s Mass Propers
- Today’s Mass: October 16 St Hedwig of Silesia
Hedwig of Silesia, a member of the Bavarian comital House of Andechs, was Duchess of Silesia from 1201 and of Greater Poland from 1231 as well as High Duchess consort of Poland from 1232 until 1238. She was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1267 by Pope Clement IV.
Leave a Reply