Dark Mysteries of the Vatican

CHAPTER 8

Opus Dei: The Pope’s Cult

The vast majority of Americans, and many, if not most, Roman Catholics in the United States never heard of Opus Dei before the publication of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code or until the film version opened in theaters from coast to coast. The sensational book and movie introduced Opus Dei in the form of an albino priest committing a murder in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

At the zenith of The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, Time magazine noted that the book depicted Opus Dei as “a powerful and ultraconservative Roman Catholic faction riddled with sadomasochistic ritual… In its 78 years, Opus Dei was a rumor magnet. Successful and secretive, it was accused of using lavish riches” and influence in the Vatican “to do everything from propping up Francisco Franco’s Spanish dictatorship to pushing through” rapid beatification for its founder in 1992, only seventeen years after his death.

Declared by Pope John Paul II to be a “personal prelature” in 1982, Opus Dei, meaning “God’s work,” has been called a “global quasi-diocese, able in some cases to leapfrog local archbishops and deal directly with [the Pope in] Rome.

Opus Dei states that it is a Catholic institution with a mission to spread “the message that work and the circumstances of everyday life are occasions for growing closer to God, for serving others, and for improving society.”

Critics say it’s a dangerous, if not malevolent, religious cult.

Wherein lies the truth?

On October 2, 1928, in Spain, twenty-six-year-old Josemaría Escrivá envisioned “a movement of pious laypeople who would, by prayerful contemplation and steady dedication of their labor to Christ, extend the holiness of going to church on Sunday into their everyday work life… He saw Opus eventually acting as ‘an intravenous injection [of holiness] in the bloodstream of society.’”

In the wake of the publication of The Da Vinci Code, and the description of Opus Dei in the novel as a sinister and malevolent group, Time reported, “Opus Dei is not a kind of spiritual pick-me-up for casual Catholics. It features a small, committed membership (85,500 worldwide and a mere 3,000 in the U.S.), many of whom come from pious families and are prepared to embrace unpopular church teachings such as its birth-control ban. Members take part in a rigorous course of spiritual ‘formation’ stressing church doctrine and contemplation plus Escrivá’s philosophy of work and personal holiness.” Opus Dei says that it helps everyday people to “seek holiness in their work and ordinary activities.”

According to the Opus Dei website, any lay Catholic may ask to join Opus Dei as long as he or she is at least eighteen years old. It takes about five years to join, with a person’s commitment to joining having to be renewed each year, before a lifelong commitment is possible. Opus Dei has been described as “a strong advocate of traditional Catholic values, focusing on the spreading of the Catholic teaching that every individual is called to become a saint and an apostle of Jesus Christ and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity…

“There are three types of members of Opus Dei: numeraries, associates and supernumeraries. Associates and numeraries make up about 25 percent to 30 percent of [the] members. They are celibate, live with other members and, on occasion, practice corporal mortification.” This is the practice of physically enduring a minor amount of suffering. “Some of the celibate members of Opus Dei practice traditional Catholic penances such as using the cilice (a light metal chain with prongs which is worn round the thigh) and the discipline (a woven cotton strap). The motivation for these voluntary penances is to imitate Christ and to join in His redemptive sacrifice, and to suffer in solidarity with poor and deprived people all over the world.” The majority of Opus Dei members are supernumeraries. They account for around three quarters of the members. They are usually noncelibate, married men or women.

In 1982, Pope John Paul II made Opus Dei the only “personal prelature” in the Catholic Church. This meant that Opus Dei’s members were responsible only to Rome and God, not to local bishops. Opus Dei says “that this unique position does not in any way mean that its members are in specifically high regard by the Vatican, or given any special treatment. Personal prelature is a canonical term meaning that the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church over Opus Dei covers the members of Opus Dei, rather than a geographical area like a diocese. A personal prelature operates in a similar way to a religious order, however there are no geographical limits, and members are laypeople rather than monks or nuns.

“Those Catholics who belong to Opus Dei also continue to be part of the congregation at their local church. Unlike members of religious orders, the members of Opus Dei join by means of private contracts and not vows. In order to join members must ask to do so, and they must also be convinced that they have received a vocation… Members have to donate a significant part of their income to Opus Dei. It is a decentralized organization and does not publish its general accounts.” Critics have also described it as a sort of Catholic Freemasonry, accusing it of being secretive and manipulative. It has a special set of greetings: “Pax” and “In aeternum” (“Peace” and “In eternity”). Its 1950 constitution barred members from revealing their membership without getting permission from the director of their center. In 1982, a new document repudiated “secrecy or clandestine activity.” Yet Opus did not identify its members, and many preferred not to identify themselves.

The American branch of Opus Dei noted that it began its apostolic activities “in Chicago in 1949, when Sal Ferigle, a young physics graduate student, and Fr. Joseph Muzquiz, one of the first three priests to be ordained for Opus Dei, arrived in Chicago. The first center was established near the University of Chicago. Today there are more than 3,000 members in the United States, and a great many more who participate in Opus Dei’s activities of spiritual formation. These activities are organized from 60 centers in 19 cities: Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Delray Beach, Florida; Miami; Milwaukee; New York; Pittsburgh; Princeton, New Jersey; Providence; St. Louis; San Antonio; Houston; Los Angeles; San Francisco; South Bend, Indiana; South Orange, New Jersey; Urbana, Illinois; and Washington, DC.”

The Prelature of Opus Dei uses seven conference centers for retreats and seminars. They are located near Boston, Chicago, Houston, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC.

Opus Dei members, in cooperation with others, operate one college and five secondary schools in the United States. They are Lexington College in Chicago, The Heights and Oakcrest near Washington, DC; Northridge Prep and The Willows near Chicago; and the Montrose School near Boston. Opus Dei also has residences for university students, the largest of which is Bayridge Residence for women in Boston. Other residences for university women are Petawa Residence in Milwaukee and Westfield Residence in Los Angeles. Residences for university men include Elmbrook Student Center in Boston; Lincoln Green in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois; Windmoor in South Bend; and Wingren in Dallas.

In 1991, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago, entrusted the parish of St. Mary of the Angels to priests of Opus Dei. The Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC, and the Holy Cross Chapel in Houston, Texas, have also been entrusted to priests of Opus Dei.

Opus Dei’s inconspicuous U.S. headquarters is a sedate red-brick $69 million, seventeen-story building at Lexington Avenue and Thirty-fourth street in Manhattan.

On October 6, 2002, Pope John Paul II elevated Escrivá to sainthood in a ceremony “watched by at least 300,000 of the priest’s followers, who filled St Peter’s Square and spilled into the surrounding streets and along the bank of the Tiber River…

“The crowd was so quiet for most of the two-hour ceremony that they might have been holding their breath. It was surely one of the most decorous crowds ever to pack St. Peter’s Square. They arrived in suits and ties, Burberry capes, and the occasional dinner jacket.” The Pope, “dressed in white vestments, arrived at the square in his popemobile,” built with bulletproof glass after the 1981 assassination attempt. Behind his stage, a giant image of the Catholic Church’s newest saint was draped from the balcony of St. Peter’s basilica. A relic of the saint, a fragment of his tooth, was placed next to the altar. At the climax of the ceremony, the 82-year-old pontiff said, ‘With the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, the saint apostles of Peter and Paul and our own, after a long reflection, many invocations of divine assistance, and having listened to the advice of many of our brother bishops, we declare and define blessed Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer saint, and we will write his name in the album of the saints.’

“Many of the pilgrims attending the ceremony were from… Spain, but others came from Latin America, where Opus Dei had strongly taken hold. Spanish doctor Manuel Nevado Rey, whose recovery from radiation-caused skin disease was deemed a miracle performed by Escrivá, was among the crowd… Medical experts consulted by the Vatican said there was no scientific explanation for the transformation.

“The progression of Escrivá to sainthood was rapid. He was beatified, or made blessed, in 1992.” He became the 468th saint to have been created by the Pope during his 24 years in office, more than those created by his predecessors over the past four centuries put together. “It was one of the fastest canonizations on record,…and one of the most controversial.” “Escriva’s path to sainthood was marred by charges that the Vatican refused to hear testimony from his critics.”

Speculating that canonization of Escrivá transgressed canon law, Newsweek magazine religion correspondent Kenneth Woodward said that the Vatican’s ‘Devil’s advocate’ system,” designed to slow down the canonization process by questioning the validity of the “miracle,” “was bypassed when witnesses hostile to Opus Dei were not called.” Opus Dei claimed that “eleven critics of Escrivá’s canonization had been heard.” Woodward said there was only one, and the “‘consultors’ were mainly Italian and members of Opus Dei: this stopped Escrivá’s many critical Spanish peers from upsetting the canonization procedure.”

What is more, said Opus Dei critics, it was “out of order for forty percent of the testimony to come from Escrivá’s two henchmen, both of whom have since become Opus leaders… Dei allegedly pressured ‘hundreds’ of bishops, ‘especially from the cash hungry third world,’ to send favorable reports to Rome ’s saint makers. It was alleged that 1,300 Bishops sent in glowing reports, yet of these only 128 had personally met Escrivá.”

Critics of Opus Dei in the United States pointed to “disgraced FBI agent, Robert Hanssen, who was jailed for life in 2001 for spying for the Russians over a fifteen-year period in return for payment of almost a million pounds, and was exposed as a devout Opus Dei member… Hanssen’s brother-in-law was reported to be an Opus Dei priest in Rome whose office was steps away from the pope.”

Robert Hanssen’s motive for his treachery was said to be a desire to afford the Opus Dei lifestyle and send his children to Opus schools. He allegedly justified his actions by the maxim of the Jesuit moral theology of the greater or lesser good.

In an article for America, the National Catholic Monthly, James Martin, S. J. noted that Opus Dei “is an increasingly strong presence on U.S. college campuses. Traditionally their efforts to attract new members had led them to colleges and universities. And it has sometimes led them into conflict with other campus Catholic groups.” Donald R. McCrabb, executive director of the Catholic Campus Ministry Association, told McCrabb, “We are aware that Opus Dei is present at a number of campuses across the country. I’m also aware that some campus ministers find their activities on campus to be counterproductive.”

One of the concerns was Opus Dei’s emphasis on recruiting, supported by an apparently large base of funding. “They are not taking on the broader responsibility that a campus minister has.” He also related, “I have heard through campus ministers that there’s a spiritual director that’s assigned to the candidate who basically has to approve every action taken by that person, including reading mail, what classes they take or don’t take, what they read or don’t read.”

A former Columbia University student noted, “They recommended I not read some books, particularly the Marxist stuff, and instead use their boiled-down versions. I thought this was odd-I was required to do it for class!”

Susan Mountin, associate director of Marquette University ’s campus ministry, asserted that it was her sense “that there probably is a need for many people to experience some sort of devotion in their lives.” What worried her was a “cult-like behavior, isolation from friends.”

The director of campus ministry at Stanford University from 1984 through 1992, Russell J. Roide, S. J., told McCrabb that he initially approached Opus Dei with an open mind. However, students began coming to him complaining about Opus Dei’s recruiting. “They just didn’t let the students alone,” he said. “Students would come to me and say, ‘Please get them off our backs.’”

When he felt his only recourse was to pass out information to students about Opus Dei, including critical articles, Opus Dei numeraries visited Father Roide and said that he was “interfering with their agenda.” Eventually, because of continued student complaints about recruiting, Roide decided “not to let them anywhere near the campus.”

In 2003, an Internet posting claimed, “As part of its normal modus operandi, Opus Dei attempts to infiltrate and take over other mainstream Catholic organizations with the aim of turning them into recruitment fronts. Opus Dei will attempt to infiltrate both the leadership councils and the general memberships of any Catholic organization that it does not control. Such organizations can include, but are not limited to, young adult groups, CYO groups, college/university Newman Clubs, Campus Ministries, parishes, and schools. The purpose of this Guide is to provide tried and tested methods for maintaining the independence of Catholic groups and to prevent [an] Opus Dei takeover and destruction of other organs of the Catholic Church.”

In April 2003, Elizabeth W. Green wrote in the Harvard Crimson that Harvard had produced “a steady stream of leaders in Opus Dei for nearly half a century, and over the past 40 years, at least three of those holding the highest position of authority within Opus Dei’s U.S. branch were Harvard graduates.” She asserted, “While Harvard students and graduates associated with the group say joining Opus Dei was the best thing they’ve ever done with their lives, others call it a dangerous trap, cult-like in its methods” that were “threatening in its caustic interpretation of Catholicism.”

At the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, reporter Janice Flynn in The Observer online said in October 2004, “Students have taken an array of paths through Opus Dei. Some have deepened their spiritual lives. Others have had emotionally distressing experiences. All have been profoundly affected by the influence of Opus Dei while at Notre Dame.”

Writing in the October/November 2004 Washington Monthly, Paul Baumann observed, “Many Catholics in Europe and in the United States regard the movement as politically reactionary, extreme in its spiritual and worldly ambition, and devious. The group’s manner of ‘recruiting,’ especially of college students, has been criticized as overbearing or worse. There is even an organization, the Opus Dei Awareness Network, dedicated to exposing the group’s methods. But Opus Dei has its admirers, who see it as a defender of traditional moral values, especially of the family, as well as a providential source of evangelical enthusiasm, orthodoxy, and unquestioned loyalty to Rome. Chief among those admirers was John Paul II, who presided over the speedy canonization of the movement’s founder. Critics, however, saw Escrivá’s 2002 canonization as a sure sign of the organization’s ill-gotten wealth and malign influence.”

After the death of John Paul II, as 115 cardinals met in conclave to name a successor, Opus Dei members knew there was no guarantee he would treat Opus Dei with the favor Pope John Paul II had bestowed upon it. “Their basic concern is that they might actually end up among the big losers,” said John Allen, correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. But the men and women within Opus Dei insisted its future was secure. A spokesman dismissed the possibility a new pope would turn against it. Opus Dei’s vision of involving laypeople further in the Church, he said, “is part of the DNA of the Church,” and part of the reason for John Paul’s backing. At stake was the influence of an organization that Allen estimated had assets worth $2.8 billion worldwide and $344.4 million in the United States.

New York Newsday staff correspondent Matthew McAllister noted, “If Opus Dei appears murky and alien to the world, that’s partly because some of its practices can come across as throwbacks to the Middle Ages.”

Noting that Opus Dei had flourished under John Paul II, David Yallop, author of In God’s Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, wrote that if Benedict XVI is not a member of Opus Dei, he is everything Opus Dei adherents could wish a Pope to be. One of Benedict XVI’s first acts as pontiff was to go to the tomb of Escrivá, pray, and bless a statue of him. He subsequently granted Opus Dei the status of personal prelature in Benedict’s reign, retaining Opus Dei’s status in which, Yallop noted, one becomes answerable only to the Pope and God.

Critics of Opus Dei also allege that it has connections with right-wing and pro-Nazi movements in Europe. Nothing in the recent history of the papacy has been more controversial than public and secret deals before and after World War II between Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the Vatican.