Few religious institutions excite the public imagination quite as much as Opus Dei, the deeply secretive, conservative Catholic organisation founded in Spain almost a century ago. Where some thriller writers are concerned, had it not existed, it may have been necessary to invent it.
Members’ names remain unknown, even to one another, unless self-disclosed or listed as officials of Opus Dei. Its practices include self-flagellation and the wearing of a chain cilice on the upper thigh to induce pain (as a reminder of Christ’s suffering).
What’s not to like if you are a writer in search of a villain! Who could blame Dan Brown for making his albino assassin monk Silas of The Da Vinci Code an Opus Dei member? Even if there are no monks in Opus Dei, albino or otherwise.
For its part, Opus Dei presents itself as a predominantly lay organisation, with some clergy, which emphasises the pursuit of personal holiness in lived, day-to-day life. Nothing to see there, then. Maybe not. Then, maybe?
Former archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin liked to recall how, in 2007, Pope Benedict asked him “where are the points of contact between the Church in Ireland and those areas where the future of Irish culture is being formed?”. The Pope, a firm supporter of Opus Dei as was his predecessor Pope St John Paul II, was indicating that, where the future of Irish culture was being formed, so the Church should be also. Fair enough, if openly.
It has been a strategy employed by Opus Dei for most of the century since it was founded in 1928, but “discreetly”, through ways such as targeting education, not least the universities, as in Ireland for instance. It is this very secrecy which has aroused suspicion of the institution, some seeing it as plain subterfuge, the better for Opus Dei to have its conservative Catholic way where public policy is concerned.
Social justice issues, for instance, tend to be of lesser interest to Opus Dei members, whose focus is on personal spirituality. So doing, some suggest, they reduce Christianity to an ideology, and which has special appeal to the political right.
It was why, of 19 ministers in Franco’s 1969 Spanish government “10 were allied to Opus Dei”, as Gareth Gore reports in this deeply disturbing and important book which should concern anyone who believes in that blessed trinity of modern democracy – openness, transparency and accountability. It is a warning and an illustration of how a small, motivated group with powerful financial backing can succeed in having its will imposed on the majority.
More immediately pertinent than 1960s Spain, it shows how Opus Dei succeeded in reshaping the current US Supreme Court to its own image and likeness. As the author reveals, it played a key role in the conversion to a right-wing Catholicism of former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, whose wife Callista Louise was later appointed US ambassador to the Vatican by US president Donald Trump in 2017.
That same year, Trump appointed the right-wing Neil Gorsuch, raised Catholic, to the Supreme Court where he succeeded Antonin Scalia, a devout Catholic close to Opus Dei. Following the death of liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September 2020, two months before the presidential election that year, the book outlines Opus Dei’s Leonard Leo’s key role in ensuring that Amy Coney Barrett, a protegee of Antonin Scalia and a conservative Catholic, was appointed to the Supreme Court.
This prompted Leo’s “good friend”, conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to describe him “jokingly” as “the third most powerful man in the world, presumably behind the pope and the president of the United States”, the author recalls.
Leonard Leo is a board member of Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center in Washington and executive vice-president of the Federalist Society, which opposes liberal interpretations of the US constitution.
Justice Thomas’s wife Gianni, an adviser to Trump, is also described by Gore as a “close friend of Leonard Leo” and they worked on various right-wing campaigns together.
“Other prominent members of the Washington Opus Dei network” during that Trump administration he reports included White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, attorney general Bill Barr, and director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow. As Gore remarks: “Not since the Franco regime [in 1960s Spain] had the movement had such direct access to political power.”
He reports how Leonard Leo and other Opus Dei grandees played a successful role in the appointment to the US Supreme Court of Justices Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all conservative Catholics.
Today, of the nine members of the US Supreme Court, five – Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito and Comey Barrett – are current or former members of the Federalist Society, while Chief Justice John Roberts was on its steering committee in Washington DC, though he insists he was never a member of the society itself.
Making all this possible is money, described in this book occasionally as “dark money”. It is in this area we come to the great strength of Opus. Gore is a financial journalist and it shows as he assiduously follows the money from Opus Dei’s humble origins in Spain to its tremendous wealth today and how it has used that financial muscle to buy its way to influence and power.
He explores how, through sleight of company law and the dedication of members, Opus Dei ended up controlling Banco Popular in Spain, its collapse, the recovery, and accumulation of vast riches in the US which is and has been used to recruit ever more new members – the primary purpose of Opus Dei – and how that money has been used so successfully to promote a right-wing political agenda.
He explains how the growth of Opus Dei was facilitated hugely by Pope John Paul II in particular, who moved heaven and earth (canon law) to facilitate and promote it, and how this was sustained by his successor Pope Benedict XVI.
It has been very different since 2013 when Pope Francis was elected in Rome. He has stripped Opus Dei and its estimated 90,000 members worldwide of many of the privileges and status conferred on it by the previous two popes. Added to which are sexual abuse allegations involving leading Opus Dei clergy and actions by women who claim to have been forced by it into unpaid servitude.
In Ireland, Opus Dei has an estimated 400 members, 18 of whom are priests including Bishop of Waterford and Lismore Phonsie Cullinan, the only Opus Dei bishop on the Irish Episcopal Conference. He has been criticised for allowing the Catholic Unscripted group, which claims Pope Francis has “deserted Jesus”, to host a weekend retreat earlier this month at Glencomeragh House in Waterford, owned by his diocese. In a recent statement, the diocese dissociated itself from “the alleged views” of Catholic Unscripted critical of Pope Francis.
