Activity Report 2010 - Sovereign Military Order of Malta in the United ...

Grand Master
Fra’ Matthew Festing
11 March 2008,
the Grand Prior of England,
Fra’ Matthew Festing was
elected 79th Grand Master.
T
he electing body of the
Order, the Council
Complete of State,
convened on 11 March 2008
to elect a successor to
Fra’ Andrew Bertie.
Fra’ Matthew Festing was duly elected
for life as the 79th Grand Master of the
Order of Malta and swore his Oath
before the Cardinal Patronus of the
Order, Cardinal Pio Laghi, and the
electoral body,
Before his election as only the second
Englishman in the Order’s 900 years to
be elected Grand Master, Fra’ Matthew
Festing had already made history in his
role as the first Grand Prior of England
since the Priory’s re-establishment in
1993, restored after being in abeyance
for 450 years.
A native of Northumberland,
Fra’ Matthew Festing was also
Benedictine educated at Ampleforth
College, and read history at St. John’s
College, Cambridge. He saw service in
the Grenadier Guards, and subsequently
extended his love of the arts becoming
an expert in the seventeenth century
through his professional life and adding
to his already encyclopaedic knowledge
of history and of the history of the Order
in particular.
In taking his Oath, the new Grand
Master vowed to continue the great
works carried out by his predecessor.
The coat of arms of Grand Master Festing
Conversing with a patient
10
SOVEREIGN MILITARY HOSPITALLER ORDER OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM OF RHODES AND OF MALTA