In 2017, Pope Francis ordered reforms of both the order’s religious life and its constitution. He approved the order’s new constitutional charter and regulations last year.
Burke, a 74-year-old American cardinal, had served as the Order of Malta’s cardinal patron since 2014. However, when then-Archbishop Angelo Becciu was appointed in 2017 as the pope’s special delegate to oversee the order’s reform, he effectively supplanted the role of the order’s cardinal patron, with Burke remaining in the post only nominally.
Pope Francis made Ghirlanda a cardinal in 2022, one of the few men to be given a red hat as a priest without being first a bishop. Ghirlanda was given the Jesuit Church of the Gesù as his titular church.
The Italian cardinal and canon lawyer is the former rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, having served on its faculty since 1975.
The Jesuit priest spent 10 years as a judge on Vatican City’s Court of Appeal, from 1993 to 2003. He was dean of the Gregorian’s faculty of canon law from 1995 to 2004 and the rector of the university from 2004 to 2010.
In 2014, Ghirlanda was named a pontifical adviser to the Legionaries of Christ amid its reform following the revelations of scandals involving its founder, Marcial Maciel, who was removed from public ministry by Pope Benedict XVI.
