The Sovereign Military Order of Malta passport is a

travel document A travel document is an identity document issued by a government or international entity pursuant to international agreements to enable individuals to clear border control measures. Travel documents usually assure other governments that the beare ...

issued to officials and diplomats of the

Sovereign Military Order of Malta The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), officially the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta ( it, Sovrano Militare Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme, di Rodi e di Malta; ...

(SMOM). The order issues

biometric passports A biometric passport (also known as an e-passport or a digital passport) is a traditional passport that has an embedded electronic microprocessor chip which contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of the pa ...

which are fully ICAO9303 compliant. The application and printing processes are handled by the in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, Austria.

Types of passport

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta issues two types of passport.

Diplomatic passports

Diplomatic passports of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta are issued only to the members of the Sovereign Council (the government of the Order) and to representatives of the Order's diplomatic corps (heads and members of diplomatic missions abroad as well as spouses of full-time diplomats and their minor children). The validity of the passport is strictly linked to the duration of the assignment. As of February 2018 there were approximately 500 passports in circulation. The numerous other members and volunteers of the Order remain citizens of their own respective countries with their national passports. Among those who possess an Order of Malta diplomatic passport are: # The Grand Master (actual position vacant since April 2020; since 13 June 2022 Fra' John T. Dunlap who also has a

Canadian passport A Canadian passport (french: passeport canadien) is the passport issued to citizens of Canada. It enables the bearer to enter or re-enter Canada freely; travel to and from other countries in accordance with visa requirements; facilitates the p ...

holds that position as Lieutenant of the Grand Master). # The Grand Commander (since May 2019 Fra’ Ruy Gonçalo do Valle Peixoto de Villas Boas who also has a Portuguese passport). # The Grand Chancellor (since May 2014

Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager (born 4 October 1949) is a German lawyer and forester and was formerly a member of the Sovereign Council of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. He served as Grand Hospitaller from 1989 to 2014, and from 2014 u ...

who also has a

German passport German passport (, ) are issued to nationals(for example, G01E) of Germany for the purpose of international travel. A German passport is, besides the German ID card and the German Emergency Travel Document (called " Reiseausweis als Passersatz" ...

Service passports

Service passports of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta are issued only to people who are in charge of a special mission within the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The validity of the passport is strictly linked to the duration of the assignment. Currently, ten service passports are in use.

Physical appearance

Passport covers carry the text above the coat of arms, and or below it. Diplomatic passports are red, whereas service passports are black. The

country-code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ' ...

XOM has been assigned by the

ICAO The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international a ...

after consultation with the SMOM and the

machine-readable zone A machine-readable passport (MRP) is a machine-readable travel document (MRTD) with the data on the identity page encoded in optical character recognition format. Many countries began to issue machine-readable travel documents in the 1980s. Mos ...

thus starts with P<XOM.

Acceptance

The SMOM has

diplomatic relations Diplomacy comprises spoken or written communication by representatives of states (such as leaders and diplomats) intended to influence events in the international system.Ronald Peter Barston, ''Modern diplomacy'', Pearson Education, 2006, p. 1 ...

with 112 countries, which therefore accept the passport. In the

Schengen area The Schengen Area ( , ) is an area comprising 27 European countries that have officially abolished all passport and all other types of border control at their mutual borders. Being an element within the wider area of freedom, security and j ...

(where most of the extraterritorialities of the order are located) it is recognized by twenty-three (except for Denmark, France and Norway) out of 26 members.

References

External links

Press release: The Order of Malta clarifies press reported figure on passports issue: currently 500 passports in circulation

(

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)
Document: XOM-AS-02001
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) {{passports Sovereign Military Order of Malta Passports International travel documents