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Speech of Lieutenant of the Grand Master H.E. Fra’ Marco Luzzago to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Sovereign Order of Malta

speech Lieutenant of the Grand Master Diplomatic Corps
21/01/2021

Mr. Doyen, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,  

The global pandemic has meant that the traditional audience with the diplomatic corps could not take place this year. I am very sorry about this as it would have been the first opportunity to meet you personallyI trust this will happen in the near future.   

I thank the Ambassador of Cameroon, His Excellency Antoine Zanga – Doyen of the Diplomatic Corps – present today on behalf of the entire diplomatic corps accredited to the Sovereign Order of Malta. Your words, Ambassador, are an invitation to face with confidence the challenges that this new year will present us with. I would also like to extend a warm greeting to the new ambassadors of Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Thailand, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lebanon, Ecuador and Kazakhstan who presented their credentials during 2020 and to those of Colombia, Nicaragua, Estonia and European Union who presented their credentials this week.

I take this opportunity to remember with emotion the Prince and Grand Master Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto, who passed away on 29 April last. During his two years in the high office of Grand Master he led the Order with commendable commitment and foresight in a spirit of service and humility. Not only have we lost a man of God, but also a Grand Master who, with his simplicity, but above all his example, his words and his gestures, transmitted harmony and serenity. In the days before his death, he was very disappointed hebeen unable to complete the reform of the Constitution and the Code, something he held dear. His legacy will illuminate the path we will follow together, in the sign of faith and hope. I am also grateful to Fra’ Ruy Gonçalo do Valle Peixoto de Villas-Boas, who assumed the leadership of the Order after the death of Fra’ Giacomo as Lieutenant ad interim during a very intense and complex period.  

We leave behind a decidedly difficult year and face one still full of uncertainties. The Covid-19 pandemic, with its devastating effects on the health and economy of many nations, is added to global tensions and conflicts, the growing problems of famine, environment degradation, the issue of refugees and those fleeing war, terrorism and hunger and the many forms of violence that humiliate and offend human dignityThe virus has hit the industrialized western world hard, but even more the poor countries and the most fragile – the poor, the disabled and the elderly, especially the elderly alone. The numbers of those who have been infected and those who have died  in constant increase  are shocking.  

Covid-19 represents an epochal challenge for us all. The Holy Father was clear about this when he said, in no uncertain terms, that we are all in the same boat and no one is saved alone. The pandemic crisis has further heightened social inequalities, accelerating the gap between rich and poor in terms of access to medical care and economic resources to cope with the crisis. We must realise that, when facing an emergency that has no boundaries and makes no distinctions, these inequalities are intolerable. A new social model based on solidarity and respect for the dignity of each individual is an ethical imperative.   

We must all make an effort to strengthen international cooperation based on renewed trust in one another, in particular by relaunching an efficient and shared multilateral system. Multilateralism is the best guarantee for ensuring peace, harmonious economic and social development and for protecting even the smallest nations, and we have to adapt it to today’s changing times.  

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The pandemic has not stopped the Order of Malta’s charitable activity on which our mission is based. Our first concern was to protect our projects worldwide, and first of all our operators and beneficiaries, enabling us to continue our humanitarian work. Many of the social and health projects carried out in the 120 countries in which the Order of Malta operates have been expanded and/or converted into programmes for Covid-19 prevention and treatment. Since the onset of the pandemic last year, the Grand Priories, Associations and our volunteer and rescue corps in Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Ireland and in many other countries have given their support to national health systems. Covid-19 hospitals and wards were opened and many of the existing hospitals the Order of Malta manages were made secure, and in some of these pavilions were opened for Covid-19 patients. Programmefor assisting and delivering basic necessities to people in isolation have been activated, as well as transportation services for patients and psychological support programmes for sick people and their relatives. Many associations have managed to continue routine home visits, providing medical assistance to the elderly, very often isolated and forced to live this complex phase in solitude. For our facilities for the elderly – I am thinking of the over 70 homes in England, for example, and the numerous facilities in Germany – a particularly delicate task was stopping visits of relatives and friends and implementing stringent safety measures to protect the health of residents, whilst ensuring the possibility of human contact through technological means. This involved rethinking daily activities, investing in staff training and introducing new tools.   

In many countries in Asia and Africa, there have been awareness-raising campaigns and hygiene services and infrastructure for access to running water have been improved. This is the case of many of our projects in Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia, where Covid-19 prevention activities, including information campaigns, distribution of hygiene items, points for hand washing and testing, have been added to the Order’s long-standing programmes in these countries, such as those for Hansen’s disease and other forgotten illnesses. In Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, health equipment purchased for the Ebola virus response has been reallocated for Covid-19 patients. In South Sudan, projects have been set up to encourage prevention.  

Many of these programmes have been implemented thanks to the work of our diplomatic missions in the countries of accreditation. 

Covid-19 vaccines represent the real hope of returning to a normal life. However, these vaccines must be promptly distributed worldwide without global economic competition in the spirit of Pope Francis heartfelt appeal in his latest Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti that “no one is excluded“. As Grand Chancellor Albrecht Boeselager reiterated in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September, “the Order of Malta shares and strongly supports the words of Pope Francis and the appeal launched last March by German President Steinmeier and four other heads of state. We believe that a fair, wide and rapid distribution of the vaccine in the world is not only ethical, but essential from the scientific point of view to contain the possible new waves of the pandemic”. 

On the diplomatic and scientific front, the Order of Malta has helped to promote better knowledge of the virus and of containment measures and therapies. The “Doctor to Doctor” project, a virtual platform we created in March, consists of a network of experts in epidemiology and virology linked to the Order. These experts regularly meet online doctors and political and health authorities in the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America to discuss best practices and the latest advances in medical research. So far, we have held over a dozen meetings, the last of which has been with Gaza, where the situation is dramatic: one third of the population is currently positive and the health infrastructure is completely inadequate. These meetings are regularly attended by some of our ambassadors from the countries in which we are present, such as Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon. I am extremely grateful to them, as well as to the many doctors and scientists who devote time and resources to the initiative. Faced with this global health threat, as our Grand Hospitaller, Dominique de La Rochefoucauld-Montbel, recently recalled in his speech at the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly, “international and intergovernmental organisations, in tandem with civil society, have a duty to foster dialogue and to promote the exchange of information on the results achieved”. 

The pandemic has increased the number of people in the world suffering from hunger precisely because it has struck a hard blow to the informal economy of many emerging countries hard and has brought those countries living on tourism to their knees. The pandemic has penalized all countries, but especially those that cannot resort to debt to support employment and the economy. It is clear that our humanitarian action is more necessary than ever. To stem this phenomenon, last year the Order of Malta appointed a Special Envoy for new forms of exclusion to analyse how these can cause disability, marginalisation, loneliness and rare diseases.   

Despite the major limitations imposed by the pandemic, our national structures have managed to continue distributing meals to deprived persons, providing home deliveries of food and basic necessities. I am thinking for example of the “Meals on Wheels” projects in Lithuania and Hungary. There are also programmes for the distribution of non-perishable food products overseas, to marginalised neighbourhoods of cities in the Dominican Republic and degraded villages in Peru, Uruguay and Puerto Rico. In Australia and the United States, support for the poorest people and the distribution of primary goods and sanitation products have been stepped up  

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In addition to this complex and delicate framework, there are ongoing conflicts in many areas of the world. From the troubled Horn and Central Africa region with the crisis in Tigrè in Ethiopia, to the clashes in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Greater Middle East – starting with Yemen, where the terrible humanitarian crisis has been going on for years and shows no sign of diminishing, and Syria, where ten years of war have destroyed a land rich in history and culture, tearing apart a thousand-year-old fabric of peaceful coexistence and dialogue between different religions. Not to mention the unresolved conflicts and tensions in the Caucasus region, particularly in Nagorno-Karabakh, recently the theatre of military actions causing death and destruction, and in Georgia. Here too, I would like to make a heartfelt appeal for the full respect for human rights.  

We dedicated a conference to the Middle East and the Holy Land last year, attended by our diplomatic representatives as well as many of the managers of our projects in the region. We are concerned about the exodus of Christians, not only because this area is the cradle of Christianity, but above all because Christians have proven to be an important factor in dialogue between the different religions in the region. In March, the Holy Father will travel to Iraq where the Christian haemorrhage has increased after the violence suffered in recent years.  

It is precisely iIraq, in the Kurdistan and central Iraq regionsthat our international humanitarian agency, Malteser International, has been present since 2014<sp