The Knights Templar have accused the head of their Malta chapter, Paul Salomone, of “high treason” and kicked him out of the order "with infamy".
Salomone is alleged to have called a meeting of the Malta priory of the Knights Templar while he was suspended as head of the chivalric order.
When contacted, Salomone said the expulsion came following a dispute over money and that the order was still governed using "medieval" rules.
His expulsion was announced by the order in a statement issued on Tuesday.
“Despite the status of suspension from the office of Prior of Malta, Mr. Paul Salomone, reiterating his insubordination, called a meeting of the Priory, indicating himself as ‘Grand Prior,’” a decree by the Grand Master of the Civil and Military Order of the Knights Templar Pietas del Pelicano (O.C.M.C.T. Pietas Pelicani) read.
“Consequently, he committed administrative defaults, withheld the assets and coffers of the Priory, and finally stained himself with the crime of high treason by trampling on the oath expressed before God to the Grand Master,” the decree, published in both Italian and English, said.
Salomone was therefore “excluded with infamy” from the order, which has its headquarters in Italy.
Salomone is also the leader of the hard-right party Aħwa Maltin (formerly Partit Popolari). The party garnered 1,553 votes (0.52 per cent) in the last general election.
The O.C.M.C.T. Pietas Pelicani officially established its Malta priory three years ago and was registered as a voluntary organisation in 2023.
People in the organisation say their aim is to do charity work and promote the Christian faith.
The Knights Templar were originally founded around 1119 to protect Christian pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land. Over time, the order assumed greater military duties, but the order's growing wealth provoked opposition from rival orders.
The order was eventually violently repressed by the French king in the 14th century.
After that, several organisations, including O.C.M.C.T. Pietas Pelicani, which is around 100 years old, were created based on the rules of the original order.
In his decree, the Grand Master ordered all members of the Templar Order to “abstain from any contact and/or institutional relationship with Mr. Paul Salomone” as a result.
The Grand Master, Antonino Aloi, also forbade Salomone from “using, referencing, or alluding, directly or indirectly, for any purpose and by any means, to names, acronyms, symbols, marks, documents, collars, and/or objects owned by the O.C.M.C.T. Pietas Pelicani or attributable to them.”
He was also ordered to return all goods, objects, furnishings, and accoutrements of the Order to the Grand Chancellery.
Salomone: They said we had to pay
When contacted for comment, Salomone said that he and many of the order’s nine council members were fed up with paying fees to the order in Reggio Calabria.
“I had told the Grand Master that members were not happy with this, but he insisted that the rules said we had to pay,” Salomone told Times of Malta.
“We could have donated the money we gave to the order to charity,” he said.
Following this, Salomone called a vote in the priory on whether to leave the order. The six members who attended the meeting agreed to leave and form an independent organisation.
He said the order was insisting on keeping its “medieval rules,” which no longer made sense in the modern day.
On the “order” to return items “belonging to the order,” Salomone said he bought items needed to appoint new knights from his own pocket, and therefore intended to keep them.
Apart from leading the anti-immigration Aħwa Maltin (Maltese Brotherhood) party, Salomone has espoused pro-Putin views and previously claimed that COVID-19 left people disabled.