Activities of the Order of Malta in the Middle East

Assertions by journalist Seymour Hersh that the Order of Malta is part of an anti-Muslim conspiracy with the U.S. Special Ops Command is pure nonsense. As proof here are a number of the activities in which the Order of Malta is involved in the Middle East. These are taken from the 2010 Activity Report of the Order.

In Iran we provided emergency medical supplies and sent an eight-man rescue team to help care for the victims of the Bam earthquake, which we followed up in subsequent years with reconstruction projects.

In Iraq we had carried out considerable rehabilitation and medical work, particularly in the Baghdad area and in Northern Iraq. Despite the deterioration in the security situation, our work in two health centres in Baghdad continues.

In Lebanon, the Order of Malta’s Association runs 16 health and social centres throughout the country and in 2008 alone assisted 85,000 patients, with over 250,000 medical services. Two mobile units of the Order made 11,500 medical interventions. More than 1,700 elderly people were looked after in the three day care centres for elderly people and 95 handicapped children were treated daily in the Centre Hospitalier de Bhannes. In collaboration with the Shiite organisation’s Imam Moussa el Sadr Foundation, the Order runs the Health Centre of Siddikine (carrying out more than 7,000 medical acts per year) and one of the two mobile clinics the Order operates in the country. The Caravan Project is a joint project sponsored by the German and Lebanese Associations with the following goals,

1. Strengthen faith and hope of the Christians in the Middle East and create mutual trust and understanding between young people of different denominations and religions

2. Serve the sick and the poor and make their life more colourful

3. Show young western Christians the charisma of the Order of Malta and enable them to speak for the Order’s cause of peace and reconciliation between the denominations in the Middle East when coming back to their home country.

Our activities in Syria include a mother and child protection project at Bab Touma and the Home of Peace for Children in Salieh, Damascus. We also run a centre for the protection of young girls in the town of Aleppo, where our other activities include the provision of start-up kits for Iraqi refugee families and the supply of school material to Iraqi and Syrian children.

In Bethlehem the Holy Family Hospital serves a majority of Muslim patients and the 50,000 baby delivered a couple months ago was Muslim.