The Supreme Court has upheld the two-year prison sentence of a man who destroyed several books from the 18th and 19th centuries in order to falsify his lineage to the Order of Malta in order to gain promotion to the Knights of Honor and Devotion. The desire to erase the traces of his ancestors who did not suit him led the condemned man to steal a book from the historical archives of the diocese of Teruel – which he later brought back to a parish in Madrid in secrecy – and “tore out”. “corresponding sheets” of the baptismal and marriage certificates of a great-great-grandfather in 1839 and a fourth grandfather in 1798, as well as the marriage certificates of some fourth grandparents in 1835 and their fifth grandparents in 1775.
The man was convicted by the Teruel Single Criminal Court of a crime against historical heritage. The decision, upheld by the provincial court, was also approved by the Supreme Court, which rejected all arguments against it. The convicted person must also pay 12,000 euros to the diocesan historical archives for the damage he caused to the books.
During the trial, following the ruling of the Supreme Court, it was proven that the convicted person had visited the historical archives of the Diocese of Teruel between the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 with the intention of obtaining these baptismal and marriage certificates. The documents were part of the Quinque Libri of Barrachina and those of Villarejo de los Olmos, both in the province of Teruel. In doing so, the convicted man intended to change his lineage to the Order of Malta and be promoted to Knight of Honor and Devotion, according to the reasons for the verdict, which were published in a statement by the judiciary on Friday.
The court also considered it proven that the candidate for the Knighthood of Honor of the Order of Malta “did not shy away from tearing out the books and making the relevant pages disappear” in order to avoid detection by the Order of Malta prosecutor. which he boasted of.
Only in 2017, according to investigations, it was discovered that Book II of the Sacramental Farewells of the Parish of Barrachina, which contained all the acts recorded in the local church between 1693 and 1774, was missing, and the missing pages were torn off. At the end of May, a person on behalf of the Order of Malta went to the Diocesan Archives of Teruel to check whether the family tree of the candidate for promotion was authentic. Since he couldn't find the documents, he alerted the director. The theft complaint was officially filed on August 10, in the middle of summer.
Delivery in confession
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Just two weeks later, the stolen book returned to the archives. The director told the Guardia Civil that it had arrived in a package from a parish in Madrid, along with a note: “Father, I am sending you this book, given by a confessor.” The court sees this as proven stated that the person who delivered the book was the defendant.
The convicted person, with the initials ODAP, was arrested in Madrid in April 2018. The Guardia Civil operation called Malta Teruel had a second delivery in which two more people were arrested in connection with the theft of the diocesan archives from Teruel. The resolution published this Friday only mentions the condemnation of the direct beneficiary of the promotion of the Maltese Cross, since he was the one who lodged the appeal. The other two people arrested were investigated for the theft of 16 sheets of documents from the 18th and 19th centuries from the Historical Archives of the Province of Zaragoza.
The Order of Malta is an organization of the Catholic Church composed of permanent members, Knights and Dames of the Order of Malta, many of whom are related to European nobility. The convicted man, married to a German princess, was expelled from the organization, as local newspaper El Levante reported in 2021, which is why he ultimately failed to receive his long-awaited promotion to Knight of Honor and Devotion.
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