"temporarily suspended" the post of Cardinal Protector of the Order in 1924 as the Pope's support for the Order was seen as an impediment to the end of the Roman question, which both Italy and the Holy See needed to settle (resulting in the Lateran Treaty of 1929). Caserta felt that his son Carlo could better guarantee the Order's Catholic character and autonomy as he was in a very senior position in Spain. Carlo did not believe he had time to take on another responsibility - these discussion even continued after the fall of the monarchy in April 1931 (clearly at odds with the belief that Carlo's line was excluded). The Duke of Calabria was best man at his nephew Infante Alfonso's wedding and the major genealogical publications (the Gotha being approved by the head of the House) all included Carlo's descendants as TS dynasts. With the confiscation of the Zamoyski properties by the communist regime, Ranieri depended on his brother Carlo for financial help but Carlo died in 1949, before either F-P or Ranieri - Ranieri wrote to his nephew Alfonso asking him to continue this subsidy but Alfonso replied he could do so no longer as he had his own family to support. Alfonso then wrote to his uncle F-P in Bavaria, as he considered himself the heir, but at the same time Ranieri, furious, had written to his brother telling him what Alfonso had said. F-P, who had sent a delegation of Constantinian knights to represent him at Carlo's funeral in Seville, never replied to Alfonso's letter - despite their earlier good relations. It was not until 1957, however, that members of the Order and Neapolitan-Sicilian nobility learned of the act of Cannes and not until 1959 that F-P wrote that he wanted Ranieri to succeed him in a codicil to his will.
The problem with the act of Cannes was that TS law laid out very precise circumstances in which a renunciation would be required - if the crowns of Spain and the TS were united in the same person. There was a risk of this happening in 1868 when Prince Gaetano married the Infanta Isabel, and so a renunciation was drawn up for him to sign in the event his wife became Queen and he succeeded as de jure king. Francesco II, however, was better advised than his brother Caserta later and did not ask for this to be signed because the circumstances did not apply, requiring this to be kept in case it was needed (and Gaetano killed himself without leaving issue). The correspondence between Caserta and the Queen Regent in 1900 stated very clearly no renunciation would be necessary and the Spanish minister of justice stated in the Cortes and in a report to the Queen Regent that a renunciation would be illegal and void. The act of Cannes actually states that Carlo renounces the future succession under the pragmatic decree and laws of the house, which of course did not actually require a renunciation in those circumstances. The Princess of Asturias died in 1904 and Alfonso XIII's first child was born in 1907, while F-P's son (Ruggero, who died aged 13) was born in 1901 -making it extremely unlikely that Carlo's son Alfonso would inherit the TS headship and Spanish Crown. In 1907 he remarried, to Princess Louise of Orleans, and his father presided at the marriage along with the duke of Orleans. Infante Carlo never even told his son about the act because he considered it precautionary and irrelevant by 1907. In any case as TS law only laid out one circumstance when a renunciation would be legal, it was beyond the powers of the king to invent another reason - there was no precedent for a prince of a foreign royal house being required to renounce his former royal dynastic rights on marrying an Infanta (Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria only renounced his Bavarian right in 1914, for different reasons - by which time his Infanta wife was already dead). This whole matter was investigated (at the insistance of Prince Ferdinando who wrote several times to King Juan Carlos), by command of the King in 1983-84 and the investigating bodies were unanimous in their opinion that Prince (later Infante) Carlos was the heir to the TS headship and Constantinian grand mastership. These opinions, by the Istituto Salazar y Castro, the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation, the Ministries of Justice and Foreign Affairs, and finally by the Council of State , have all been published in full (and in English translation in my 1989 book). A law case brought in 1961 in the Tribunal of Naples, in which Achille Di Lorenzo sought a judgement that he should return certain objects belonging to the Order to Ranieri was decided against Di Lorenzo. In 1981, the Italian Council of State gave an opinion as to the continued legitimacy of the Order under Italian law, and determined that it was a legal entity, but said "it had been informed" that the head of the house of the TS was Prince Ferdinand duke of Castro - this, however, was not an investigation into the succession question. Various claims have been made as to the supposed position taken by John XXIII (with nothing ever published or stated by the Holy See), and by Pope JP II, but purported letters from the latter were exposed as forgeries in 1988 and denounced by the Holy See, as was a supposed opinion of a commission of cardinals, all of whose signatures were forged. In 1961 Di Lorenzo published the letter of 10 December 1900 from the Queen Regent to Caserta with a forged, extra page added, after the signature in a different hand (which of course did not conform to the official copy in the archives of the royal palace, Madrid).
BTW I wrote the entry in Burke's back in 1976, deliberately taking a neutral stand.
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