One of Europe’s smallest states, the Vatican, has overrun another. After weeks of tension, on Wednesday Pope Francis effectively took control of the Sovereign Order of Malta, a 900-year-old religious group that also exists as an independent state under international law.

The rift between the Holy See and the order is more than a fascinating legal drama: It’s a proxy for a wider spiritual rift between Catholic traditionalists and a pope trying to sideline them by increasingly authoritarian means.

The Order of Malta was founded amid the First Crusade to defend Christians and provide hospital care to people of all faiths in the Holy Land. Pope Paschal II recognized it as a religious order in 1113. In subsequent centuries the order also won recognition as a sovereign entity in its own right.

Today the order operates as a global humanitarian organization with more than 100,000 staff and volunteers, according to its website. Yet it has retained many of its chivalric traditions—and closely guarded its sovereignty and Catholic character.

Beginning in 2005, three of the order’s humanitarian projects distributed thousands of condoms, most notably in Myanmar, in violation of church teaching that the use of artificial contraceptives is “gravely immoral.”