VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis will name his own man to run the Knights of Malta temporarily after the head of the ancient chivalric and charity institution resigned in the climax of a bitter dispute over sovereignty with the Vatican.

FILE PHOTO: Pope Francis (R) meets Robert Matthew Festing, Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta during a private audience at the Vatican June 23, 2016. REUTERS/Gabriel Bouys/Pool/File Photo

The pope asked Grand Master Matthew Festing, 67, to step down at a meeting on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Rome-based Catholic institution said. Grand masters usually rule for life.

Festing and the Vatican had been locked in a dispute since the Knights’ Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager was sacked in December in the chivalric equivalent of a boardroom showdown - ostensibly for allowing the use of condoms in a medical project for the poor.

The two-month battle of wills reflected broader opposition inside the Roman Catholic Church to Francis’s efforts to modernize the Holy See and gently unravel the legacy of his conservative predecessors.

The Vatican, which is a sovereign state, said the pope would name a “pontifical delegate” to run the group, which also enjoys sovereign status and is recognized by about 100 countries.

Vatican sources said this was a temporary solution until the Knights were in a position to elect their own leader again.

The move was similar to one in 1983 when the Pope John Paul II named a delegate to temporarily run the Jesuit order, which he feared was becoming too leftist. More recently, the Vatican named a delegate to run the conservative Legionaries of Christ, which has hit by a sexual abuse scandal.

The Knights’ top governing body, the Sovereign Council, was convened for Saturday to take stock of the crisis.

When the dispute broke out, von Boeselager appealed to the pope, who appointed a commission to investigate. Festing, a Briton, refused to cooperate, saying that violated the order’s sovereignty.

CONDOM CONTROVERSY

Some insiders said the push against von Boeselager was an excuse by Festing and arch-conservative American Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, the order’s patron, to increase their power.

Burke, who was demoted from a top Vatican job in 2014, is one of four cardinals who have made a rare public challenge to Francis, accusing him of sowing confusion on moral issues.

The all-male top leaders of the Knights of Malta are not clerics but take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the pope. The institution has 13,500 members, 25,000 employees and 80,000 volunteers worldwide.

The order was formed in the 11th century to provide protection and medical care for pilgrims to the Holy Land.

When Festing fired von Boeselager, he accused the German of hiding the fact that he allowed the use of condoms when he ran Malteser International, the order’s humanitarian aid agency.

The church does not allow condoms as a means of birth control and says abstinence and monogamy in heterosexual marriage is the best way to stop the spread of AIDS.

Von Boeselager said he closed two projects in the developing world when he discovered condoms were being distributed but kept a third running for a while because closing it would have abruptly ended all basic medical services to poor people. </s> VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has defrocked the Chilean priest at the center of the global sex abuse scandal rocking his papacy, invoking his "supreme" authority to stiffen a sentence originally handed down by a Vatican court in 2011. In a statement Friday, the Vatican said Francis had laicized the 88-year-old Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was originally sanctioned to live a lifetime of "penance and prayer" for having sexually abused minors in the upscale Santiago parish he ran.

The "penance and prayer" sanction has been the Vatican's punishment of choice for elderly priests convicted of raping and molesting children. It has long been criticized by victims as too soft and essentially an all-expenses-paid retirement.

The Vatican didn't say what new evidence, if any, prompted Francis to re-evaluate Karadima's sanction and impose what clergy consider to be the equivalent of a death sentence. It said Francis made the "exceptional decision" for the good of the church, and cited the church canon that lays out the pope's "supreme, full, immediate and universal power" to serve the church.

The statement said the decree, signed Thursday, takes effect immediately and that Karadima was informed of it Friday.

The decision appeared aimed at showing a get-tough approach to sex abuse after a series of missteps by Francis and accusations by a former Vatican ambassador that Francis had rehabilitated a now-disgraced former American cardinal early on in his papacy.

Earlier this month, some of the highest ranking Catholic leaders from the U.S. met with Pope Francis to discuss the priest abuse scandal. At the time, U.S. bishops said Pope Francis "listened deeply from the heart" but they offered few details and no "next steps" in how the church planned to deal with abuse.

While the move to defrock Karadima will be welcomed by Chilean victims as overdue, the decision could spark a religious debate for those who see it as a second punishment for the same crime. Francis' conservative critics might also bristle at another display of raw papal power from the Argentine Jesuit.

Francis sparked a crisis in his papacy earlier this year when he strongly defended one of Karadima's proteges, Bishop Juan Barros, against accusations that he had witnessed Karadima's abuse and ignored it.

Francis had claimed that the accusations against Barros were "calumny" and politically motivated, and he defended his 2015 decision to appoint Barros bishop of a small Chilean diocese over the objections of the faithful and many in the Chilean hierarchy.

After realizing that something was amiss, Francis ordered a Vatican investigation that uncovered decades of abuse and cover-ups by the Chilean church leadership. Francis apologized to the victims and set about making amends, including getting every active bishop in Chile to offer to resign.

To date, he has accepted seven of the more than 30 resignations offered, including that of Barros. It was the second time in a month that Francis has laicized a Chilean priest, after five years in which the Vatican appeared to favor less drastic sentences.

On Sept. 15, the archdiocese of Santiago announced that Francis had defrocked the Rev. Christian Precht, citing the Latin terminology — "ex officio et pro bono Ecclesiae" — on his own authority and for the good of the church.

The decision by Francis to revisit Karadima's sentence and impose the stiffest penalty available to him, with the exception of excommunication, is significant as he battles to gain credibility on the abuse issue.

Francis has said he has "zero tolerance" for abuse, but his record has been shoddy and the Barros fiasco made clear that, at least until he changed course this spring, he was more willing to believe his clerical friends and advisers than victims.

Pollsters have cited the Karadima scandal, which first erupted in 2009, as the tipping point in the Chilean church's progressive loss of credibility among ordinary Chileans.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of Karadima's abuse who has been a key driver in pushing for justice for victims and an overhaul of the Chilean hierarchy, thanked Francis for taking action against Karadima.

"I never thought I'd see this day," Cruz tweeted. "I hope many survivors feel a bit of relief today." </s> Vatican Police have broken up a gay orgy at the residence of an advisor to Pope Francis, an Italian newspaper reports.

Local police officers entered the premises late last month after neighbours complained about strange happenings and frequent visitors to the address in Vatican City.

The apartment that was raided was being used by an aide to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, and was allegedly full of men who were taking drugs and having sex. The priest who was residing in the property was arrested and taken to a drug detox clinic. The paper reports that the priest in question is now at a spiritual retreat in Italy.

Cardinal Coccopalmerio, is a key member of the Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which oversees the investigation of clerical sex abuse. Pope Francis is said to be “enraged” by the incident.

The Cardinal may be forced to retire early as a result of the raid, despite the fact that he does not appear to have been directly involved.

Earlier this year, the Pope welcomed the openly gay Prime Minister of Luxembourg and his husband to the Vatican.

Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and his partner Gauthier Destenay, joined European heads of government for the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome last month.

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 Check out X-rated pictures from Greek’s Come True calendar (NSFW) </s> ROME (AP) — The Latest on the resignation of the Knights of Malta head (all times local):

The Vatican says Pope Francis will name a pontifical delegate to run the embattled Knights of Malta, effectively taking over the sovereign lay Catholic order after its leader resigned in a bitter dispute with the pontiff over condoms.

The move marks an extraordinary intervention of one sovereign state — the Holy See — into the governance of another — the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, an ancient aristocratic order that runs a vast charity operation around the globe.

A statement from the Vatican said Francis accepted the resignation of the order’s grand master, Matthew Festing, which he had offered Tuesday.

The statement said the order’s governance would shift temporarily to the No. 2 “until the pontifical delegate is named.”

The head of the Knights of Malta has resigned after entering into a public spat with Pope Francis over the ouster of a top official involved in a condom scandal.

Marianna Balfour, spokeswoman for the ancient lay Catholic order, told The Associated Press that Matthew Festing had met with the pope on Tuesday and offered his resignation.

In an email, Balfour said that “I can confirm this.”

Festing had refused to cooperate with a papal commission investigating his ouster of the grand chancellor, Albrecht von Boeselager, over revelations that the order’s charity branch had distributed condoms under his watch. Festing had cited the Knights’ status as a sovereign entity in refusing to cooperate. </s> VATICAN CITY—Pope Francis on Saturday pushed out the Vatican’s conservative doctrine chief, tapping a deputy instead to lead the powerful congregation that handles sex-abuse cases and guarantees Catholic orthodoxy around the world.

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