78th Grand Master, The Order of Malta
Bertie was admitted to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) in 1956. He became a Knight of Justice in the order by taking Perpetual Vows in 1981 (the equivalent of a monk).
He also joined the government of the Order in 1981 as a member of the Sovereign Council and in April 1988 he was elected the 78th Grand Master. Subsequently, he was Hospitaller of the Sanctuary of Lourdes, which is the annual pilgrimage site of SMOM. He succeeded the late Fra' Angelo de Mojana, the Milanese nobleman who had served the Order as Grand Master since 1962 and accomplished a great deal of modernization to the organization. Although it is considered sovereign, the Order of Malta is also a religious order of the Roman Catholic Church, so Bertie's election needed the ratification of Pope John Paul II, which was obtained on 11 April 1988.
Bertie described the aims of the Order as “to help the poor and the sick; that is and always has been our primary aim”:
- "The other military orders were there to fight the Saracens and to save Spain or the Holy Land or Prussia from the pagans. But we always had this special commitment to the poor and the sick. Our aims today are exactly the same as they were in 1099, the sanctification of our members through service to the sick."
Read more about this topic: Andrew Bertie
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