Descendant of Royal Stuart Family : Briton Named to Head Knights of Malta

A descendant of Britain’s royal Stuart family was elected leader of the Knights of Malta, an ancient Roman Catholic charitable order, it was announced today.

Fra Andrew Bertie was voted grand master at a secret conclave of 36 electors Friday at the group’s villa in Rome. His election makes him the highest-ranking layman in the Catholic church.

The order, founded with a pilgrims’ hospice in 11th-Century Jerusalem, has the status of an independent state. It maintains diplomatic relations with 50 nations.

Its 10,000 members, led by Italy with 2,800 and the United States with 2,500, operate about 200 hospitals and first-aid centers in 90 countries, especially in the Third World and war zones.

The announcement of Bertie’s election was delayed for approval by Pope John Paul II.

Bertie, 58, is the knights’ 78th grand master, or supreme leader. He succeeds Fra Angelo de Mojana di Cologna, an 82-year-old Italian who died Jan. 18 after 25 years as grand master.

The group selects as grand master only people who have followed vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. They must also have 200 years of nobility on both parents’ sides.

Andrew Willoughby Ninian Bertie of the Earls of Lindsey and Abingdon--his full title--was born in London on May 15, 1929.

His mother, Lady Jean Crichton-Stuart, was a descendant of the Stuarts, the ruling family of Scotland from 1371 to 1603 and of England and Scotland from 1603 to 1714, with an 11-year interruption in the 17th Century. Bertie’s aunt on his mother’s side was married to the brother of Sir Winston Churchill.

As a youth, Bertie studied at a Benedictine boarding school in Ampleforth. He earned a degree in modern history at Christ Church College of Oxford.

For more than 20 years, he taught French, Spanish and Russian at a Benedictine school in Worth in southern England.

He joined the knights in 1956 and took his vows his 1981.