1 Scudo - Festing

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta occupies a peculiar position in numismatics: it issues coins as a sovereign entity despite controlling no territory, operating instead from a building in Rome under a complex legal arrangement with the Italian state. Matthew Festing served as 79th Prince and Grand Master from 2008 until his forced resignation in 2017 following an internal dispute with the Vatican over the dismissal of the Order's Grand Chancellor — one of the more unusual constitutional crises in modern Catholic institutional history.