← Untold: Opus Dei
Untold: Opus Dei
Opus Dei, Ep. 4: The closest tabernacle to the White House
00:38:30
How Opus Dei became a key pillar of conservatism in Washington
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- [00:00]
Brooke Devard
Hello?
- [00:00]
Hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care journeys, wellness tips, and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty, I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skin care experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for naked beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.
- [00:51]
Antonia Cundy
In Washington, D.C. two blocks from the White House lies K Street. It's a loud, busy boulevard that's known as Washington's Corridor of Influence. It's where lobbyists, law firms and think tanks set up shop. Among the office blocks, there's an unassuming glass storefront with three super sized white letters in its window. Cic. The Catholic Information Centre. The CIC is an event space, bookstore and chapel. A place of respite and reflection for Washington's industrious minds. Here's a promotional video from their YouTube account. Before coming to the CIC, I didn't know enough about my faith.
- [01:35]
Leo Meir
The essence of leadership is understanding the new generation of leaders. You actually have to create a pipeline
- [01:42]
Tom Roberts
of leaders who are properly formed.
- [01:45]
Jack
What better model to have in Washington? What better way to evangelize?
- [01:50]
Antonia Cundy
For high powered Catholics working in the Capitol, the CIC is conveniently located to attend a quick lunchtime Mass. A metal plaque declares it the closest tabernacle to the White House. Over the years, a lot of heavy hitters have sat in its pews.
- [02:07]
Leo Meir
Jim Nicholson, who was the secretary for Veterans affairs under, I think it was under George W. Bush. I remember Santorum coming a few times,
- [02:17]
Antonia Cundy
meaning Rick Santorum, the former Republican senator from Pennsylvania.
- [02:22]
Leo Meir
Gingrich's wife Calista used to come and shop there all the time. I remember Scalia coming in and buying things a couple times.
- [02:29]
Antonia Cundy
That's Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker. And Antonin Scalia, the late Supreme Court Justice Pat Cipollone, who defended President Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial.
- [02:41]
Leo Meir
Who else? Oh God, who? Bill Barr. He was at the CIC all the time.
- [02:45]
Antonia Cundy
Bill Barr, as in the former Trump Attorney General? And the voice you're listening to is Leo Meir. He worked at The CIC for the better part of a decade.
- [02:55]
Leo Meir
I remember being impressed by it when I started there, that all these important, influential people were somehow affiliated with this place. And I felt important being somehow connected to that.
- [03:11]
Antonia Cundy
And at the heart of the CIC, Opus Dei. Since the 1990s, the center has actually been run by Opus Dei priests.
- [03:22]
Leo Meir
I think the language we used to use was, the Catholic Information center is an agency of the Archdiocese of Washington, and the spiritual needs of the Catholic Information center have been entrusted to the priests of Opus dei.
- [03:35]
Antonia Cundy
During his time at the cicada, Mir began to view all those impressive, influential connections in a different light.
- [03:43]
Leo Meir
Once I learned more about Opus DEI and saw how they operated, it was like, oh, this makes sense. If it was somebody rich and powerful and they wanted to talk to the priest or go to confession, the priest would drop whatever they were doing to do it. But if it was just like a regular old grandma with her rosary beads that wanted to talk to the priest and go to confession, they never had time.
- [04:04]
Antonia Cundy
For many, the CIC is the embodiment of Opus Dei's political power, a bricks and mortar metaphor right in the middle of the swamp. But like Mir, it wasn't until I'd learnt more about Opus DEI that I could actually make sense of the influence the CIC is having on American political culture. That's what I'm going to tell you about in this episode, the story of Opus Dei's partnership with a new cohort of wealthy conservatives eager to spread its hardline views and how that's put Opus DEI on a collision course with the Vatican. For the Financial Times, this is untold Opus dei, episode four, the closest tabernacle to the White House. Leo Meir started working full time at the CIC in spring 2005. Fresh out of college in rural Virginia, he was excited by the hustle and bustle of dc.
- [05:06]
Leo Meir
I grew up in the small town in Ohio and I wanted to be a priest. And I wanted to be a priest that said the old Latin Mass. And, you know, you have people come in, ask them questions about the church and about church teaching, and I'd be able to point them to a book that would answer that question for them. Or I talk to them about buying statues and medals and tchotchkes.
- [05:25]
Antonia Cundy
A few years into Mir's time at the cic, a new director arrived, a priest called Father Arnie Pannulla.
- [05:32]
Leo Meir
He reminded me of Johnny Carson, the way he looked. They kind of had the same build, that same kind of short gray hair. They had a lot of the same mannerisms, a little bit of a Midwestern accent.
- [05:43]
Antonia Cundy
That warm Midwestern tone also left a strong impression on George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and author. Father Arni was one of his favorite priests.
- [05:53]
George Weigel
He was highly intelligent, very friendly, but 110% Catholic. And I think people found that combination of conviction and accessibility very, very attractive. It was under Father Arnie's leadership that the place really went to a different level of activity and impact.
- [06:18]
Antonia Cundy
Father Arnie, who died in 2017, was an Opus Dei Old Timer. For several years, he'd been the head of Opus Dei's entire US branch. At one point in Rome, he even lived with the founder, Jose Maria Escriva.
- [06:34]
George Weigel
But it would be a mistake to think of CIC as simply an expression of Opus dei. It's a much broader, more engaged enterprise than that, although it expresses. It's an expression of Opus Dei's conviction that laypeople are the Church and are to be evangelists in the world, especially the work world, which in Washington, of course, means the political world.
- [07:08]
Antonia Cundy
In that political world, Father Arnie had a vision for the CIC to become more than just a bookstore and chapel. Like everyone in dc, he wanted to build a network, one that spread Opus Dei's message that professional work can be a path to holiness. That's why it had made its home on k Street among DC's lobbyists.
- [07:31]
Leo Meir
So you might. And people have said, well, this means that Opus DEI is power hungry. No, it's world hungry Hungary.
- [07:38]
Antonia Cundy
That's Michael Pakarlak, professor of political economy at the Catholic University of America. He's a married member of Opus dei, or the Work, as it's often known.
- [07:47]
Leo Meir
Peter did not go out to the countryside of Turkey to set up the center of the Catholic Church. He went right to the seat of power. He went to Rome. That's definitely in the spirit of the original apostles. So that's what the Work does. And so K Street is where the. It's not a center, really. It's a service. It's like a public service that the Work does.
- [08:07]
Antonia Cundy
But while Mir was working at the cic, he saw other little ways that Opus Dei's spirit shaped the place, sometimes down to the smallest details. He remembered how strange he thought it was when Father Arne would reprimand him for putting out flowers or a tray of cheese and veggies before an event.
- [08:28]
Leo Meir
He would say things like, that's not in the spirit of the Work. That's not in the spirit of Opus dei. Well, you know, that's women's Work like an Opus dei, like you wouldn't. We don't have men doing things like that.
- [08:38]
Antonia Cundy
In the late 2000s, Mir helped father Arnie launch a more expansive program of events. Talks, book signings, and networking nights at the CIC. Some of Father Arne's biggest plans involved DC's young professionals.
- [08:53]
Leo Meir
Everything we did there was geared towards young professionals. Father Arnie was like, we gotta get these young professionals in here, you know?
- [08:59]
Antonia Cundy
As they talked, it became clear to Mir that Father Arne had a particular type of young professional in mind.
- [09:06]
Leo Meir
You would see the type of people that he considered to be, quote, unquote, young professionals. You could be 25 years old and be fully employed in a white collar job, but you weren't a young professional like his. Young professionals were people that were kind of on a track to having a prestigious career. They were strategically placed in powerful organizations. Those were the young professionals.
- [09:30]
Antonia Cundy
What would they call the other people?
- [09:31]
Leo Meir
There just wasn't a name for him.
- [09:33]
Antonia Cundy
Father Arnie wanted to create fraternity among the next generation of DC politicos. But most of all, he wanted to educate them on the church's social teachings. Except again, Mir found, just as Father Arnie focused on a particular type of young professional, he also focused on a particular type of social teaching.
- [09:55]
Leo Meir
The more we talked about, it became very clear that the way he was defining church social teaching was abortion, same sex marriage, contraception, those kind of wedge issues. But it wasn't Catholic social teaching like feed the poor and shelter the homeless. It wasn't very Christlike. There wasn't an emphasis on love the weak. Let's build up the weakest members of our community or the people that can't offer you money or power or prestige. Those people didn't matter.
- [10:27]
Antonia Cundy
Mir watched as the CIC transformed under Father Arnie's tenure. He developed deep partnerships with its K Street neighbors and professionals on Capitol Hill, bringing them closer to Opus Dei's vision of Catholicism.
- [10:41]
Leo Meir
He saw the CIC as being like a beachhead or a bunker where we're equipping young professionals and policymakers to fight the culture war. They saw that as a spiritual fight, and they were getting the ammunition for that spiritual fight from the Catholic Information Center.
- [10:59]
Antonia Cundy
Mir, for his part, wasn't that involved in the spiritual fight. He worked in the shop and did the books in the back office. But he recognized the power of Father Arnie's pitch to the CIC's donors.
- [11:11]
Leo Meir
I remember thinking, oh, this is going to be good marketing stuff. We do like a spring and a fall fundraising campaign that's the kind of thing that's going to look good on a letter to donors saying, this is what we're doing here. We're a very real player in the culture war.
- [11:26]
Antonia Cundy
But after a few years, Mir decided to leave the cic. He didn't like the way his faith was being reduced to partisan politics.
- [11:34]
Leo Meir
It became a place for conservative networking. It was almost kind of like his talking point, like his little elevator pitch on what the CIC was. We were just a nice bookstore and a place for people to go to Mass. But he wanted us to pivot to being a place that equipped people to fight the culture war. This was a platform for them to get their ideas out.
- [11:53]
Antonia Cundy
The relationship between the CIC and its donors has become increasingly important because it's made Opus DEI a key part of a wider movement, a Catholic force within right wing politics as a whole. And it's starting to attract the Vatican's attention. Let me give you the backstory. Over the past couple of decades, countless sexual abuse scandals and cover ups have left us Catholics disenchanted with church leaders. The church has been on the back foot, losing money, parishioners and its own voice. And that's allowed other characters to fill the void.
- [12:32]
Tom Roberts
There are a number of these organizations essentially filling a vacuum created by the lack of any really substantial presence in the culture of Catholic bishops whose authority has been diminished.
- [12:45]
Antonia Cundy
That's Tom Roberts, the former executive editor of National Catholic Reporter, an independent publication. Its readers tend to lean progressive.
- [12:53]
Tom Roberts
This was about began about maybe six years ago when we began to realize that big money, especially on the right sector of the Catholic world in the United States, began to just pour enormous sums of money into certain areas of the church.
- [13:10]
Antonia Cundy
The thing about this money is that it's coming from laypeople, wealthy individuals in the pews, not religious leaders. And with it, they've taken over a lot of church related messaging. They run institutes, newspapers, television, some help fund the university think tanks you heard about in the last episode.
- [13:29]
Tom Roberts
I think we're going through kind of a sea change here in terms of who speaks for the church. And they're setting the agendas. They're the influencers, if you will.
- [13:38]
Antonia Cundy
Roberts walked me through some of these big name conservatives who have also been funding Opus DEI initiatives.
- [13:45]
Tom Roberts
One of the most forward and public actors is a fellow named Timothy Bush. He's an attorney and founder of something called the Bush Firm, which deals in high end real estate and also wealth planning for very rich people. And he has founded an institution called the Napa Institute, which is an organization that gathers people, particularly from the far right of the church and American politics, for seminars and day long gatherings in Napa Valley, which is a lovely area of California.
- [14:21]
Antonia Cundy
Bush, no relation to the other famous American Bushes, by the way, has positioned his Catholic Institute in opposition to various progressive ideas like the Black Lives Matter movement, which he described at a Napa event as promoting racism, critical race theory, and destroying the nuclear family. Tickets to the Napa Institute's conferences, with wine tastings and speakers like J.D. vance, costs thousands. It's an elite event.
- [14:48]
Tom Roberts
There are other very wealthy Catholics who are part of this mix, including Leonard Leo, who is a profoundly influential actor in American politics and religion.
- [15:00]
Antonia Cundy
Leonard Leo is a big deal. He's a conservative legal activist who for years has led the Federalist Society, a powerful network of conservative lawyers. He's widely credited for having ushered three judges onto the Supreme Court who swung the balance on overturning Roe versus Wade. Together, in the absence of church leadership, wealthy laity like Leo and Bush are showing American Catholics how to live their faith in public life.
- [15:28]
Tom Roberts
You have an institution that is really essentially leaderless, without a voice in the culture, looking for some identity. And in comes Mr. Bush and others who say, we've got this. We know what Catholicism is about. Tim Bush was talking at one of his conferences. There wasn't any irony in his voice when he said, we can do things that the bishops can't because we have access to a whole lot more money. And they do. They're using it to build their own systems, their own echo chambers, their own outlets.
- [16:03]
Antonia Cundy
Leo didn't respond to multiple requests for comment, and Bush declined to comment.
- [16:07]
Tom Roberts
By the way, it's a very conservative theology. It's a very conservative view of the culture, a vision of Catholicism that isn't bothered by a lot of the especially economic and military questions that were being asked in earlier eras.
- [16:23]
Antonia Cundy
When it comes to voters in the pews, despite today's abortion politics, Catholics actually split pretty evenly between the two political parties. In 2024, Trump only had a slight advantage among Catholic voters. So these conservatives aren't the only or even significant majority of Catholics, but right now, they're definitely the loudest. And they've been facilitated by US Bishops.
- [16:51]
Tom Roberts
The Catholic bishops had reduced their influence and their big political concerns to the issue of abortion. That became the top issue in all of their political statements, and that gave people like Tim Bush and Leonard Leo essentially cover, if you will. If we concentrate on abortion and gender issues and opposing homosexuality, concern for the poor and immigration and all the rest of it came what they call prudential issues. In other words, they just didn't top the list. And wherever they fell, well, we can keep working on them.
- [17:31]
Antonia Cundy
But the thing is, the Vatican has pushed back on this approach. The late Pope Francis actually rebuked us bishops for acting like politicians and said what he didn't like at all was the idea that the only sins that are relevant are those below the waist. But Opus DEI has thrived in this partisan Catholic ecosystem. Both Leo and Bush have given significant donations to Opus DEI and CIC initiatives because for this new conservative donor class, Opus DEI has been the perfect partner. Remember, Opus DEI is built on the idea of revitalizing the faith of ordinary lay Catholics. Its members are elite, hard working and formed by Opus dei, they end up pretty obsessed with sexual morality. From TradWives to J.D. vance, the American conservative revival of the language of Christianity and traditional family values has been further entrenched by Opus dei. Opus DEI declined to participate in this podcast and the CIC didn't respond. So I asked George Weigel, the conservative theologian who was close with Father Arne, and he gave me another perspective, which is that these issues are front and center within Opus DEI because from some Catholics perspective, they're simply more pressing.
- [18:56]
George Weigel
I think Father Arnie and I would both have agreed that the fundamental issue in the Western world today is who are we as human beings? Are we simply bundles of desires and the state's role is to facilitate the satisfaction of those desires, whatever they may be, as long as nobody else gets hurt? Or are we more than that? Are we just congealed stardust or are we more than that?
- [19:28]
Antonia Cundy
In particular, relation to the culture war, like what is meant by that is
- [19:32]
George Weigel
the culture war, which side of that argument are you on?
- [19:36]
Antonia Cundy
But what's an example of that?
- [19:39]
George Weigel
Can a man become a woman? Should men participate in women's sports? And Catholic Church has an answer to that. We're more than congealed stardust. We're better than we sometimes think we are. And living the faith can help us live out what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.
- [20:02]
Antonia Cundy
For Weigel, it's not that the Catholic Church has been captured by conservative donors. It's that Democrats and the left have dealt with these questions badly. And he says that's particularly true when it comes to abortion.
- [20:16]
George Weigel
There is no room for pro life Catholics in the Democratic Party. Whether we're talking about life issues, whether we're talking about virtually anything in the public realm where moral judgment is involved, the Democratic Party is simply not open to People like me.
- [20:44]
Antonia Cundy
But I'm not completely convinced by Weigl's argument. The suggestion that Opus DEI has aligned itself with these conservatives simply because they take Catholic issues more seriously. Pope Leo and the late Pope Francis have both spoken about abortion on equal terms with other issues of life, like war, the death penalty, gun control, foreign aid, immigration and climate change. In the past, spokespeople for Opus DEI have told me that it doesn't have a political agenda and that it just follows the teachings of the Pope. But in reality, Opus DEI seems to be firmly opposed to the liberalizing trend these Popes have set, because the talks and events it programs through the CIC almost always take this narrow focus on on abortion, gender and sexuality. And I think the actual reason Opus DEI has gained so much power in the US is not just because of its deeply conservative social views, but because it's focused on cultivating and serving the elite. Nearly a third of Opus Dei's US members live in dc, and that concentration is not a coincidence. In the era of Donald Trump, Father Arnie's vision has come true. The CIC has become a conservative religious hotspot. And a surprising number of people in right wing policy circles in D.C. are linked to Opus Dei. People like Ryan Anderson, who runs a powerful think tank called the Ethics and Public Policy Centre. Here he is speaking at a CIC event.
- [22:26]
Leo Meir
Modern feminism seems to be trying to force women to live, to learn, to love, to work as if they were males.
- [22:34]
Antonia Cundy
Or Kevin Roberts, the man behind the Heritage foundation and Project 2025, the playbook for the second Trump administration. He receives weekly spiritual direction from Opus Dei. Again, here he is speaking at a CIC event.
- [22:51]
Leo Meir
Our speaker for the evening, Dr. Kevin
- [22:52]
George Weigel
Roberts, was named the President of the Heritage foundation in October of 2021.
- [22:56]
Leo Meir
Thanks.
- [22:57]
Tom Roberts
I never get tired of being called a cowboy Catholic. Because it's true. Don't worry, Father Charles, I'm abiding all D.C. laws here. Yes, but at home we're very well armed.
- [23:09]
Antonia Cundy
I asked to interview Roberts a year ago, but he didn't reply. In response to a pre publication request for comment, he said this podcast was anti religious and anti Catholic and suggested I report on radical Islamism instead. The CIC has also developed even closer ties to Leonard Leo, the founder of the Federalist Society we mentioned earlier, who helped create a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. People I spoke to in Opus DEI circles told me that Leo has a bit of a celebrity status within the organisation. His children attended Opus Dei schools in D.C. and he's a Backer of another Father Arnie initiative, a young professionals program called the Leonine Forum. Here he is speaking at a black tie Gala the CIC held in his honour in 2022, where he made reference to criticism of Opus Dei.
- [24:03]
Leo Meir
Finally, there are the current day bigots, the progressive Ku Klux Klan. They spread false and slanderous rhetoric about Catholic apostolates and institutions like the one represented here tonight.
- [24:15]
Antonia Cundy
With the Federalist Society, Leo created a pipeline of conservative legal professionals. And through its partnership with people like Leo, Opus DEI has served a similar function in dc, creating a pipeline of particularly conservative Catholic political types. When I looked up the Leonine Forum alumni, this young professional program backed by Leonard Leo, at least 50 of them worked in the Trump administration. 150 had worked for conservative causes or think tanks. Another 150 for Republican congresspeople or Republican appointed judges. It's through this networking, through this shaping of people in positions of power that Opus DEI pushes its particularly reactionary Catholicism into American political life. Take what happened to Margaret Doran, the Princeton graduate from the last episode. Through an Opus DEI member at the Witherspoon Institute, Margaret got a role at the Heritage foundation working under another Opus DEI member on marriage and family issues. Many of her friends, Opus DEI members, followed similar paths. And she finds this concerning.
- [25:30]
Brooke Devard
What I see with this, this community, I saw it at Princeton, in the Washington D.C. catholic community. These people all socialize with one another. They all work together in these universities, think tanks, government positions, and they're all part of this extremely insular and controlling religious group. There are zero boundaries.
- [25:55]
Antonia Cundy
Margaret believes that Catholics should advocate for their convictions in public life. And she supports conservative values. That's not her issue.
- [26:04]
Brooke Devard
They're not monks or nuns, but they are essentially living out in direct obedience to their religious superiors. You are supposed to tell your spiritual director absolutely everything that's going on in your life. This could be personal things. Disagreements with friends, family, co workers. It could be sins you're struggling with. But it could also be decisions like what job should I take, where should I go to graduate school, what projects should I be pursuing at work? These people are acting to the outside world as if they're making their own decisions and acting freely, when really they are running every single major decision they make by somebody else who might have no role at all within the organization, because you don't actually know in these organizations who is in charge, who is really pulling the strings.
- [27:00]
Jack
They're not sitting around. How do we get an Opus DEI member to be president of the United States, that's Jack.
- [27:08]
Antonia Cundy
You heard from him in the last three episodes. He says that Opus Dei's formation, the intimate spiritual direction it offers people, is what makes its political power so effective.
- [27:21]
Jack
The concern of Opus DEI has always been one on one apostolate dealing with individuals, and that's how Opus DEI influences politics. Just as Opus DEI is trying to influence higher education, it's through drawing these people into an evening of recollection, drawing them into spiritual direction with a priest, drawing them into a seminar, because the goal is to provide formation to that person which will then, they would say, empower from the outside, we might say unduly influence that person to exercise whatever their function is in society. According to, again, Opus Dei's particular view of Catholic teaching, that's going to have very direct consequences in how that person exercises whatever their function is in society, such as a congressperson voting on a particular piece of legislation. There's a hierarchy of values, and that congressperson's hierarchy of values may change as a result of their contact with Opus dei.
- [28:33]
Antonia Cundy
That hierarchy of values, that's the emphasis on sex and the family I talked about earlier. Together, Opus DEI and other conservatives focused on these social issues have guided the Trump administration towards its goals. Transgender people have been banned from the military. State funding has been diverted from contraception access. LGBTQ rights have been rolled back. And even for members like Jack, who didn't work in a job related to politics or DC at all, Opus DEI still had an influence on how he cast his vote.
- [29:08]
Jack
I did not vote in local or presidential elections until I left Opus DEI because I did not feel capable of voting the way I really thought I took seriously. Care for the environment, care for the immigrant. I thought that was just as serious as anything else. And I thought that's what the Church's magisterium was teaching us through the popes. So I felt really incapable of going to the polls in the United States and voting what I thought, because in Opus dei, abortion was the number one political issue in America.
- [29:53]
Antonia Cundy
Riding this wider conservative movement, Opus DEI looks like it's on a path of success. But as its political power has grown within the Catholic Church, its position has actually become increasingly fragile. Current and former popes have pushed back on how conservative politicians in America have tried to wield their faith.
- [30:14]
Leo Meir
Pope Francis has criticized some of our policies when it comes to immigration. Pope Francis wrote, essentially, the Vance did not understand that aspect of Catholic Church teaching. He said, Christian love is not.
- [30:27]
Antonia Cundy
And over the past few years, the Holy See has been scrutinizing how Opus DEI is run as an organization at the request of the Vatican. Opus DEI is currently revising its bylaws. Church bylaws may sound a little dry, but what Pope Francis decreed in 2022 was actually a major restructuring of Opus Dei. He ruled that its head would no longer be a bishop and also increased the Church's oversight of the group, removing its direct line to the papacy. It is a change that has direct consequences on Opus dei.
- [31:02]
Tom Roberts
Opus DEI as we know it will come to an end if those changes are affected.
- [31:08]
Antonia Cundy
A year later, Francis made another public decree that sent shockwaves through Opus dei, clarifying that only Opus Dei's priests, not its lay members, are beholden to the group's authority.
- [31:21]
Leo Meir
What is the Vatican hoping to achieve here, Bob? That's not exactly clear, I suppose, at
- [31:25]
George Weigel
this point, but typically you divide something to conquer it, and they're clearly trying to break something that has existed within Opus dei.
- [31:33]
Leo Meir
Most observers see this as an exercise in sort of clipping Opus Dei's wings.
- [31:40]
Antonia Cundy
These decisions have come at exactly the same time as intense public scrutiny of Opus Dei's power and abuses of that power. Both of Francis decrees came just months after dozens of complaints were made to the Church and in the media from members of Opus DEI around the world claiming physical and spiritual abuse. In Argentina, federal prosecutors opened an investigation into unpaid domestic servitude in Opus DEI centers. And it seems that Francis trajectory has been continued by Pope Leo, who this year made a very public show of meeting Gareth Gore, a journalist who wrote a highly critical book about Opus dei.
- [32:21]
Jack
The organisation is more political than it is religious. Opus DEI diverges from certainly the current Pope on a number of issues.
- [32:30]
Antonia Cundy
So it seems like the conflict between the Vatican and Opus DEI might come down to something surprisingly simple how it treats people. It's the cost of its expansion that might end up unraveling Opus dei, the cost to people like Sarah, the woman who started this story. Two years after Sarah joined Opus DEI as a numerary assistant, the isolation and workload overwhelmed her. She actually reached out to the person who had brought her into the organisation, her childhood mentor. Several times, she rarely heard back. Sarah wasn't sure how much longer she could last. But she kept thinking about what she'd been taught.
- [33:15]
Sarah
If you don't follow your vocation, you won't really be happy. So that kind of freaked me out. Would I ever be happy? Would I end up living a miserable life?
- [33:25]
Antonia Cundy
Eventually, Sarah found the strength to speak to her director. I'm really unhappy, she told her. I'm not sure this is my vocation.
- [33:35]
Sarah
I remember it was really, really hard for me to bring that up to her. I was like physically shaking and I started to cry. And she just encouraged me to keep praying about it and pushing through it. And this is an opportunity to become closer to God. And it was hard for me to come back and talk about it more because I felt very dismissed.
- [34:05]
Antonia Cundy
A month later, Sarah tried again, this time in the confessional.
- [34:11]
Sarah
He wasn't our usual priest at the center. He was higher up in the government of Opouse. And I remember telling him that I was really unhappy and that I think this isn't for me. And as soon as I just said I'm unhappy, he cut me off and just said, everyone has doubts. You just have to keep moving forward, you have to be cheerful. He just like abruptly cut me off and his tone of language changed when I had gone in. He was very bubbly and nice and when I started talking about being unhappy, he became very firm. And that was the point where I think the suicidal thoughts really started to take full effect.
- [35:03]
Antonia Cundy
In the end, it was Sarah's parents who intervened. She called her mum and told her she no longer wanted to be alive, that she felt like that was the only way out of Opus dei. Her dad came, packed up her bags and took her home.
- [35:21]
Sarah
I think back to being, you know, a 19 year old girl who's really struggling with her mental health, still trying to figure out how to advocate for herself. To me, I didn't feel like I had the freedom to just leave where you've been almost conditioned to have blind obedience and do what you're told and not question anything and just embrace suffering as a way of getting closer to God.
- [35:51]
Antonia Cundy
Sarah's now 29 when we speak, I often forget how young she still is because what she went through feels like a whole other life. Since then, she's steadily built a new one. She's got a dog, a job that makes her happy, real friends. But she no longer has a relationship with God. More than anything else, that's why she finds it hard to forgive Opus dei.
- [36:15]
Sarah
I feel like I lost my faith through that whole process of being an Opus DEI and leaving. I feel like religion was weaponized against me and kind of used to keep me in an unhealthy situation for their own purposes. I would like to have a relationship with God again and pray and go to church, but being in church, it makes me cry. And I think there's just a lot I still need to work on and work through for my time. In Opus dei, and hopefully someday I can go back to church right now, just not there yet.
- [37:02]
Antonia Cundy
This is the thing I find it hardest to get my head around about Opus dei. It says its goal is to bring people closer to God, and I've heard lots of stories of it doing just that. But for so many others, so many people like Sarah, Opus DEI did the opposite. Because in pursuit of its expansion, in pursuit of spreading its message, I think Opus DEI has developed a blind spot in relation to its own behaviour. The way it abuses the spiritual power it has over its members and its opaque efforts to influence society. And that's come at a cost to its members, but also at a cost to the public, because we have a right to know who's trying to influence us. And Opus DEI simply isn't transparent about its agenda. At best, Opus DEI is looking for a path to fix the problems it sees in society. But I think it should reflect on its own problems first, because it seems to me that a lot has got lost along the way. You've been listening to untold Opus dei. If you want to share a tip in relation to this podcast, please get in touch@antonia cundyft.com the reporting for this series was by me, Antonia Cundy and Persis Love. Written by me, Josh Gabbit Doyon and Persis Love. It was produced by Josh Gabbit Doyon and Persis Love. Original music, sound design and mixing by Breen Turner, script editing by Matt Vella, fact checking was by Simon Greaves. Our executive producer is Topher forhes and the FT's head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks to Nigel Hansen, Madison Marriage, Kadam Shubh, Helen Worrell, Miles Johnson, Maureen Saint and Paul Murphy. Thank you to the many sources who shared their stories with us for this series and thanks for listening.
- [39:17]
Jack
What's it like running a business? With Avalara, you don't wake up thinking about tax or compliance because it's handled calculating and filing accurately and audit defensibly. Avalara Agentic, AI Tax and compliance with confidence.
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Leo Meir
The latest episode of the Next Five podcast is all about fraud versus reality in the age of AI. Simon Miller at CIFAS joins me. AI has made scanning and scammers emotionally intelligent, as does Gareth Murray at Monzo. The constant arms race between the bank and the fraudster and Uber Behagel at Verif. When one data leak happened on the
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Jack
Internet, how many times is it sold
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Leo Meir
on the dark web? Listen to the full episode of the Next Five wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy.