Albrecht von Boeselager has been reinstated as Grand Chancellor or foreign minister of the Knights of Malta chivalric and charitable order in what is being described as a "Papal coup".
Boeselager was a victim of a Vatican row over condoms after the contraceptives were distributed during charitable work in 2013 in Myanmar.
He was ordered to resign by British Grand Master Mathew Festing in the presence of Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, an ultra-conservative critic of the Pope. Festing, whose appointment would normally be for life, was himself asked to stand down by Pope Francis last week after he refused to cooperate with the Vatican commission set up to investigate the sacking Boeselager.
Boeselager had had official oversight of the Myanmar projects. He has always insisted he stood by Catholic teaching banning the use of condoms.
The order's sovereign council said in a statement issued from its headquarters in Rome that it had dropped disciplinary proceedings against Boeselager. Ludwig Hoffmann von Rumerstein of Austria is interim Grand Master until a new election is held.
Pope Francis wrote to the orders's council on Friday and said he wished to "renew the spirituality of the Order, specifically of those members who take vows."
The Knights of Malta was founded in the 11th century.
Festing, 67, was asked by Pope Francis personally to step down.
Boeselager had been fired by Festing because he was said to have supported the use of the condoms. Festing then opposed the Vatican's enquiry into the dismissal of Boeselager because he said it was interference in the order's sovereign affairs.
"Considering the legal irrelevance of this group and of its findings relating to the legal structure of the Order of Malta, the Order has decided that it should not cooperate with it," the order stated on its website, in reference to the enquiry.
According to Crux Now, the justification for the Festing-Burke move against Von Boeselager was that between 1989 and 2014, when he was in charge of the order's international humanitarian arm, Malteser International, it financed aid agencies that distributed condoms to prevent AIDS among prostitutes in Myanmar, Kenya and South Sudan.
Von Boeselager says when he found out about this, the projects were closed.
He has said that to suggest he is other than a loyal Catholic obedient to church teachings is "absurd".
The Catholic blog One Peter Five analyses the latest move in saga, which it describes as a "Papal coup", and asks: "What lies hidden beneath the stories we are being told? Why is this nearly thousand-year-old sovereign, lay religious order – involved primarily in the sort of charitable works Francis lauds – the target of such an aggressive (and arguably illegal) intervention from Rome? What leverage is being brought to bear by the Vatican to coerce behaviors within the Order that seem, on the surface, entirely contrary to self-preservation and good sense?"
Malta Today comments: "There is no escaping that a rivalry between Cardinal Burke and Pope Francis has been framed onto the Knights-Vatican feud. Burke was appointed to the job or the Order's patron by Francis in November 2014, largely seen as a demotion for the former head of the Holy See's supreme court, the Apostolic Signatura, and to instead assume a largely ceremonial role as the Knights' liaison with Rome.
"Burke is an outspoken critic of the Church's direction under the leadership of the Argentine pontiff."
Conservative Catholic commentator Chris Gillibrand told Christian Today: "The contrast between the spiritual and intellectual poise of Benedict could not be greater. As Benedict fades, Francis is being released from all restraint and is making the Church in his own image and not God's. He constantly accuses others of his own faults. He preaches mercy but shows no mercy in his governance of the Church.
He said the order's "sin" was to be a conservative order. "He is giving the Knights of Malta a punishment beating, as a warning to others, a proxy for their patron, Cardinal Burke."
