Englishman made Grand Master of Knights of Malta
By Ed West
14 March 2008

Matthew Festing has been elected as the Grand Master of the Order of Malta

An art historian who works for Sotheby's has become only the second Englishman in almost 800 years to be elected Grand Master of the Order of Malta.

Fra' Matthew Festing, 59, the Grand Prior of England, was chosen to lead the Order's 12,000 members on Tuesday by secret ballot in Rome.

The election follows the death last month of Grand Master Fra' Andrew Bertie, the first Englishman to lead the Knights since the 13th century (the first, Hugh Revel, was arguably Anglo-Norman rather than English).

The election of the 79th Grand Master by the Council Complete of State, the Order's electoral body, was held in the chapel of the Order's official headquarters on the Aventine Hill. Fra' Festing had to be elected by a majority plus one in order to win the required 27 votes.

As with papal elections all ballot papers were then burnt and before the news was announced the first person outside the Order to be informed was Pope Benedict XVI.

Matthew Festing OBE has a firm military background. His father was Field Marshal Sir Francis Festing, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and he is a former Grenadier Guard. He is also a colonel in the Territorial Army and a chairman of the Sandhurst Foundation, a charity linked to the Royal Military Academy. He was educated at Ampleforth College and St John's College, Cambridge, where he read history.

Fra' Festing became a member of the Order in 1977 and took the solemn religious vows of chastity, poverty and obedience in 1991. Two years later he became the Grand Prior of England, the first since the Reformation. He is also a renowned art expert, in particular on the 17th and 18th centuries, while his brother Andrew is a respected portrait painter whose commissions have included the Queen, Queen Mother and Princess Anne. Fra' Festing lives in Northumberland, where he is deputy-lieutenant of the county.

The Order's spokeswoman Philippa Leslie said after the election: "This is wonderful news as it is very, very rare to have a British Grand Master and now we have had two in a row.

"Matthew is a very warm and delightful person and he will be a wonderful Grand Master. The first person to be informed of the result was Pope Benedict and he has passed on his congratulations.''

The order was established in 1099 primarily to provide medical assistance to pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Land, and it then became a military religious group defending the Holy Land.

When the Crusaders were defeated the Order moved from Jerusalem to Cyprus, then Rhodes and Malta before finally setting up a permanent base in Rome in 1834. It is now one of the world's most extensive charities, providing humanitarian assistance in almost 100 countries.

Recently the Order has hit back at the conspiracy theorists who believe its charity work in the Middle East is a cover for a Christian crusade.

Winfried Henckel von Donnersmarck, a member of the Order's Sovereign Council, said last week: "We are not a mystery organisation but at the same time we have been around for nearly 1,000 years so there will always be an air of mystery about us.

"However, this has led to some conspiracy theories being banded about that are humanitarian work is a cover used to send mercenaries to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq."