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KNIGHTS OF MALTA
Know the fact behind the Covert Up... |
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Briefing: (Source for the following is an article from Covert Action, Winter 1986, "The Sovereign Military Order of Malta," by Francoise Hervet.) "Already in existence at the time of the first Crusade in 1099, in 1113 the Order of St. John was given its independence by Pope Pascal II, permitted to elect its own Grand Master, and soon the Order began military participation in the Crusades along with the Knights Templar and Teutonic Knights. The Order of St. John recruited successfully among the European aristocracy and soon controlled extensive estates throughout the continent, assimilating those previously belonging to the Knights Templar which it had helped crush during the first two decades of the 14th century, with the Templar leadership burned alive as heretics." The Order was driven from Jerusalem in 1187, fled to Acre, Cyprus, and finally to Rhodes. At Rhodes they set up a military dictatorship and for the first time were a sovereign territory. By 1530 they were driven from Rhodes and moved their headquarters to Malta. On that island they built a powerful naval force and fought many naval actions. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) was a major military force in the Mediterranean until their defeat by Napoleon in 1789. The Order was given protection by Russian Emperor Paul I, and by 1834 had moved its headquarters to Rome with help from Pope Leo XIII. The American Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (Knights of Malta, SMOM) was founded in 1927. "By 1941 Francis Cardinal Spellman was listed as the 'Grand Protector' and 'Spritual Advisor' of the Order, with John J. Raskob as Treasurer. Members included John Farrell, then President of U.S. Steel, Joseph P. Grace, and John D. Ryan. In 1934 Raskob, inspired by the French fascist Croix de Feu, and working closely with Morgan Bank's John Davis, had been a principal financier in the plot to organize a fascist coup in the U.S. The plan failed when General Smedley Butler, who had been set up to lead the project, denounced it." His Eminence Cardinal Spellman, "Grand Protector" of the Knights of Malta, worked with Pope Pius XII to help Nazi war criminals escape justice. According to Frederic Laurent (*L'Orchestre Noir. Pairs: Editions Stock, 1978), All studies [of the post-WWII nazi networks] have shown the determining role played by the Catholic Church in the flight of war criminals. Since April 1943, following negotiations between Pius XII and the ultra reactionary American archbishop Francis Spellman, the Holy See became the clandestine center of Anglo-American espionage in Italy. This collaboration in fact had begun the previous year... between Earl Brennan, a veteran of the American State Department and Gian Battista Montini, at the time a bishop and Under-Secretary of State at the Vatican. This close collaboration between the future [Pope] Paul VI and the American secret services continued after the war through the [CIA] intermediary James Angleton... When the victorious Americans entered Rome in June of 1944, chief-General Mark Clark was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. On December 27, 1946 James Angleton received the Croci Al Merito Seconda Classe from the Knights of Malta. "On November 17, 1948 SMOM awarded one of its highest honors, the Grand Cross of Merit, to Reinhard Gehlen, the nazi chief of intelligence on the Soviet front. He was subsequently installed by the Americans as the first chief of West Germany's equivalent of the CIA, the *Bundesnachtrichtdienst* (BND: federal secret service), under West German Chancellor Adenauer, a devout Catholic who had received the Magistral Grand Cross personally from SMOM Grand Master Prince Chigi." In 1956, Clare Booth Luce of the *Time* magazine empire became a "Dame of Malta." (Clare Booth Luce is on the board of the Rev. Sun-Moon's Washington Times newspaper.) Former CIA Director John McCone is shown to be a member of the Knights of Malta by their 1980 list. (The article by Hervet, used as the source for this information, has many other noteworthy persons listed as belonging to the Vatican military order of SMOM. The article should still be available from Prevailing Winds Research. I have their phone number as 805-566-8016 or write to PO Box 23511, Santa Barbara, CA 93121.) "Freemasonry generally purports to be hostile to Catholicism, and conversely, the Vatican has at various times forbidden Catholics to join Masonic organizations. Nevertheless, in December of 1969 an exclusive meeting was held in the Rome office of Count Umberto Ortolani, the Ambassador of the Order of Malta to Uruguay, who has been called 'the brains' behind the fascist P-2 Masonic Lodge, which had been established in the mid-1960s. In addition to Ortolani, the meeting included only Licio Gelli, Roberto Calvi, and Michele Sindona." The article from which the above has been taken is several pages long. Interested readers are referred to that article, "The Sovereign Military Order of Malta" by Francoise Hervet. (Covert Action, Winter 1986; or article may be available from Prevailing Winds, see phone and address listed previously in this issue of CN.) "I, Frank Anthony Keating, II, in the name of the high and undivided Trinity, do promise a vow to keep and conceal the high mysteries of this noble and invincible Order of Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, from all but such as are ready and willing to serve the church of Christ, by acts of valor and charity; and that as far as in me lies, I will defend the church of the Holy Sepulchre from pillage and violence, and guard and protect pilgrims on their way to and from the Holy Land; and if I perform not this vow, to the best of my abilities, let me become inanimata [dead]." The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) traces its lineage, many centuries back, to the Knights Templar. Later Freemasonry, according to Michele Marie Moore (*Oklahoma City: Day One*. ISBN: 0-9653301-1-0. Harvest Trust, PO Box 1970, Eagar, Arizona 85925), is a descendant of the Knights Templar. The Knights of Malta were taken over by the Knights Templar during the Peasants Revolt, says Moore. The Knights Templar, first granted a charter by Pope Alexander III in the 12th Century, were under the protection of the Vatican. The Church later grew suspicious of the Knights Templar and joined with King Phillip of France to destroy the Order in the early 14th Century. In 1517, the Protestant Reformation was born when a German monk, Martin Luther, condemned the selling of papal indulgences. Allegedly, support from secret societies such as Freemasonry was offered to religious reformers. Infuriated, the Catholic Church became determined to exterminate the secret societies. In 1738, Pope Clement XII issued a papal bull against Freemasonry. In 1864, Pope Pius X condemned socialism and the secret societies. (*The Occult Conspiracy* by Michael Howard. ISBN: 1-56731-225-X)The secret societies planned to infiltrate the Vatican and put their own Pope on the Chair of St. Peter. The Carbonari (Charcoal Burners), originating in Scotland at the time of Robert the Bruce, were one of these secret societies operating against the Church. The hard-right faction in the Vatican saw recent liberalization (circa 1960s) of the Church as proof that it had been penetrated by the secret societies. Pope John XXIII, according to Piers Compton (*The Broken Cross*), was an initiate of a secret society. The liberalizing Pope John XXIII was succeeded, in 1963, by Archbishop Giovanni Montini, Pope Paul VI. In the early 1950s, Montini linked with CIA through the CIA's front, American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE). ACUE was founded in 1949 by William "Wild Bill" Donovan of the WWII espionage agency, OSS (Office of Strategic Services). ACUE was connected to Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, chairman from 1954-1976 of the Bilderberg Group. (*The Occult Conspiracy*) Pope Paul VI feared a left-wing takeover in Italy. His fears were shared by Licio Gelli, founder in 1960 of the Masonic lodge known as P2 (Propaganda Due). (But according to Moore, author of *Oklahoma City: Day One*, the CIA and the Mafia parented P2 during World War II. Furthermore, says Moore, the Mafia itself is actually the underworld arm of Freemasonry.) Also in 1960, deputy head of the Polish Secret Service, Mikael Goliniewski, defected to the United States. Goliniewski changed his name to Alexi Nicholaevitch Romanov and said he was the surviving son of Tsar Nicholas II. The Knights of Malta supported Goliniewski's claim. (This editor considers Goliniewski's claim plausible. See *The File on the Tsar* by Anthony Summers. See also past material by Sherman Skolnick in Conspiracy Nation. Skolnick personally interviewed Goliniewski/Romanov for several days and is convinced Goliniewski was indeed the Tsarevitch.) A leading critic of Goliniewski's claim was Lord Louis Mountbatten, uncle of Prince Charles, husband of the late Princess Diana. After the death of Pope Paul VI in the summer of 1978, he was succeeded by Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I, a.k.a. "the smiling Pope." John Paul I received a list of Masons who had infiltrated the Catholic Church and was made aware of P2's corrupt activities in the Vatican. (See past issues of CN for further background.) Luciani, a progressive and a liberal, was likely to have cleaned up the infiltration, but he was murdered by his enemies in September of 1978. (See *In God's Name* by Yallop, and *The Money Changers* by Charles Raw.) From 1969 to 1971, Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma was an FBI Special Agent. From 1981 to 1984, he was the United States Attorney, Northern District of Oklahoma. From 1985 through 1988, Keating served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (Enforcement), Washington, DC. From 1988 to 1989, he was an Associate Attorney General of the United States. Named Knight Commander of the Holy Sepulchre by Pope John Paul II in 1988, Keating is an honored and high-ranking member of the Knights of Malta. Others belonging to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta ("the Pope's militia," according to Moore), are
Likings
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