Vatican Bank

[Peter Lemkin]

Opus Dei and SMOM are inextricably linked.

The Order

This humanitarian organization has agreed with the state of Italy on a certain level of sovereignty in 1966, expressed mainly in the issuing of stamps and coins. One should draw attention on their stamps, since they are mostly heraldic and vexillological (and history of art, but we are not dealing with that here?). Most of the serious stamp dealers don't recognize those stamps to be real stamps, but for vexi-freaks, they are quite interesting, and I dare say a valuable source of (primarily) coats of arms. The Order has its branches (missions) in many countries of the world, and their stamps are recognized by 44 states (until 1994). However, on some of the stamps there are images of the flag of the Order, red with a white Maltese cross. On all the images the flag is shown flying, so it is difficult to estimate the proportions. Is seems to me that 1:2 is approximate enough.
Željko Heimer, 8 March 1996

Extracts from the St. John Ambulance Australia Cadet Manual (3rd Edition) :
Seven years later [the Knights Hospitaller] were given the island of Malta by the Emperor Charles V of Spain. ... The Order had always contained people of different nationalities and was organised into eight national 'Tongues', which were, in the official order of precedence, those of Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon, England, Germany and Castile-Portugal.
The British occupation in 1800 (...) found the knights dispersed and disunited. Subsequently, they established their headquarters in Rome, where their claims to sovereign status are recognised by more than thirty countries with which they maintain diplomatic relations. This is exclusively a Roman Catholic and a religious Order, known now as the Sovereign Military Order.
Jonathan Dixon, 24 September 1999

SMOM is sovereign and has diplomatic ties with a number of countries, but it has no territory except a few buildings used for administration.
Ole Andersen, 14 March 2001

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is a sovereign entity according to international law, but is actually used as a classic example of an entity which is sovereign (like a country) but is not a country. It does not have a territory, and therefore, it does not live up to the requisites of a country. A sovereign entity does not have to be a country. SMOM is an example of this. For sovereignty, it is generally considered that the entity should be recognized as such by other sovereign entities.
Literature on the subject: R.M.M. Wallace: "International Law", Sweet & Maxwell, 2nd edition, London 1992, page 76.
Elias Granqvist, 14 March 2001

The case of the SMOM is an interesting matter. Different books on international law give different explanations. Some countries consider it as a sovereign organization, others consider it as a country without territory, others consider it as the world's smallest country. Whether it is a country or not depends on the status of the headquarters of SMOM (a building and a garden - 6000 square meters). The headquarters have an extraterritorial status, but it is not clear whether it is the territory of the SMOM or it is the embassy of SMOM in Italy. In any of the two cases, I think that the SMOM should be considered as a country, as it has many of the functions of a country: it has diplomatic relations with many countries, issues passports (only countries, the Red Cross, and the UN issue passports), and it's a member of a few international organizations.
Ivan Marinov, 14 March 2001

I have at hand a book, "Report from Practically Nowhere" by John Sack, copyright 1959 et seq., published by the Curtis Publishing Company, with chapters about visits to Andorra, San Marino, Lundy, Liechtenstein, Sharjah, Athos, Swat, Punial, etc., with a chapter about the S.M.O.M. wherein is stated that, by agreement with the Italian government, citizens of the S.M.O.M. are limited to three: the Grand Master, the Deputy Grand Master, and the Chancellor. These carry S.M.O.M. passports. The numerous other members of the order remain citizens of their own respective countries.
John Ayer, 14 March 2001

The case of SMOM is similar to the Vatican's case in this sense. The Vatican also has citizens (1500 persons), but there is nobody with only Vatican citizenship. For example, the Pope [John Paul II] is citizen of both the Vatican and Poland. The other peculiarity is that the Vatican issues only diplomatic passports, so this is a country, where all the citizens are diplomats. SMOM has the same practice. A month ago there was a scandal in Hungary with the chief of the humanitarian service of the Hungarian branch of the SMOM. In the news there was the following information: he was beaten in Romania and both his Hungarian and his SMOM diplomatic passport were stolen.
Maxval, 14 March 2001

According to <www.smom-za.org>, SMOM has diplomatic relations with 75 countries. It also has permanent observer status at the UN and Italian recognition of its extraterritorial rights over its properties in Rome. Given the humanitarian activities of the SMOM, I'd guess that the value in having it recognized as a sovereign entity is that it can be seen as neutral, allowing SMOM into a war zone or wherever doesn't have to carry the political baggage it might have if SMOM were a corporation operating under the laws of Italy, let alone the United States, for example.
Joe McMillan, 15 March 2001

John Ayer made reference to a 1955 book by John Sack titled 'Report from Practically Nowhere.' I had a chance to read this book over the weekend, and while it's obviously somewhat - or more than somewhat - out of date in much of its political information, it's still a quite entertaining look at many of the little, and little-known, micro-states of the world.
In the chapter on the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Sack mentions that the S.M.O.M.ians (as he calls them) ran a hospital in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, 'where, at first, the flags of the S.M.O.M. were thought to be Denmark's by the Schleswig-Holsteiners, who figured the Danes weren't up to any good.'
Andrew S. Rogers, 9 April 2001

According to the UN's official site <www.un.org>, SMOM maintains a recognized permanent observer mission in New York. SMOM is not categorized by the UN as a non-member state (like e.g. the Holy See) but among "entities and intergovernmental organizations having received a standing invitation to participate as observers."
Joe McMillan, 15 May 2002

My DK flag book says that the "Order of St. John" flies a reverse English flag (my description) in Britain, but the Maltese cross in Rome. Is this correct? If so, are the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and this Order the same thing?
Nathan Lamm, 29 July 2002

Two different orders. After the Reformation, several of the branches of SMOM were completely Protestant, so they left SMOM, but kept on doing more or less the same. There is a formal cooperation between these orders nowadays, in part to keep more or less phony orders from infringing on the accumulated goodwill.
Ole Andersen, 29 July 2002

The SMOM is the Order of St. John, however in England (and the Commonwealth and even the US) the order which claims descent from the Order of St John (in particular, from the English Langue of the Order) is the "Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem" which was granted a royal charter by Queen Victoria, and from which springs St. John Ambulance in all its various forms. See St. John Ambulance. The flag of this order is the "reversed English flag" (the cross of St. John) with the Queen's crest in the canton.
Jonathan Dixon, 29 July 2002

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is a sovereign entity in international law, with diplomatic missions to 92 countries and permanent missions to the UN, the European Commission and other international and multinational organisations. The Order's continued sovereign status derives from its established acceptance as such by other sovereign states, rather than from its possession of an extensive national territory. As such, it is an unusual example of a sovereign international entity, similar to the Vatican City State. The extraterritorial seat of the Order is in Rome.
Peter Martinez, 21 December 2002

SMOM is the remnant of the Order of Malta which had territories in Mediterranean: Palestine, Rhodes,
Aegean Sea, Malta, etc. And it has at least 2 territories: The Palace of Via Condotti in Rome and the Fort Saint Angel given by the government of Malta a few years ago.
Jean-Marc Merklin, 28 December 2002

The present "territories" of SMOM are not considered territory any more than an embassy of a foreign country is considered its territory in any country. Thus, SMOM does not have a territory.
Elias Granqvist, 28 December 2002

The SMOM also ruled the island of St. Croix in the Caribbean from 1651 to 1665.
Ned Smith, 29 December 2002

I've taken a look at the order's own website and other references and as far as I can tell SMOM itself does not claim to be a state. It describes itself not as a state but as a "sovereign subject of international law." That seems to mean that it can make treaties, etc., but it apparently acknowledges that it has no territory or people of its own. As someone has noted, its facilities in Rome and elsewhere have a status equivalent to that of an embassy. An embassy possesses sovereign immunity from the jurisdiction of the host state, but it is not actually part of the territory of the sending state. Apparently the logic of the SMOM position is that the Order has always had sovereign status independent of whatever territories it may or may not have occupied from time to time. If it had been a state, its sovereignty would have been extinguished when its home territories were conquered, as happened on three occasions. SMOM is a legitimate and highly praiseworthy organization and is widely recognized as possessing sovereign status (useful in fulfilling a nonbelligerent honest broker's role in wartime situations). It just isn't a "state."
There are other Orders of Malta besides SMOM, some of which are reasonably legitimate successors of the original order (the Protestant branches in Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands, for example); one of which (in the UK) has a questionable lineage but is recognized by the British crown and, like SMOM, conducts important humanitarian operations, especially ambulance services; and many of which are entirely fraudulent or recreational, mainly, I believe, here in the United States.
Joe McMillan, 29 and 31 December 2002