Special Episode: Is Pope Leo Really Dissolving Opus Dei?

Brad Onishi: What's up, y'all? Brad here with a special episode about Opus Dei.

Last week, a new report dropped from Info Vaticana that claimed that Opus Dei is on the brink of a major internal rupture. According to the Catholic Herald and other sites, there is a sense that big changes are coming to Opus Dei.

Now, if you don't know about Opus Dei, you'll hear about it in a minute. But it is a kind of secretive society, a very peculiar institution within the Catholic hierarchy that allows its members, both priests and laypeople, to have a wide range of freedom for recruiting, fundraising and action in the public square.

Most importantly, for those interested in American politics, Opus Dei has an overwhelming presence in Washington, DC, and over the last decades has recruited high-level, influential, powerful people to its ministry and to its causes.

Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation and the shepherd of Project 2025, often seeks counsel and ministry from the Opus Dei center in Washington, DC. There are, of course, ties to Leonard Leo and all of the ways that Leo raises money for various political enterprises, including his work on the Supreme Court and all over the country.

Today, we have Gareth Gore back on the program. Gareth is a financial reporter who is the author of the magisterial book called Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church.

I interviewed him a couple of months ago when the book came out, but we had him back on because there is simply no one else in the world who can talk about this potential dissolution of Opus Dei with the kind of insight and knowledge that Gareth has.

Gareth is in London. I am on the West Coast, and so the time zones were hard to make work on short notice. Thus, my friend, the wonderful and talented and just absolutely incredible Annika Brockschmidt, stepped in and was able to interview Gareth to talk about what's happening with Opus Dei.

If you don't know Annika, she is a German-based journalist who has written all over the place, in US outlets and in Germany, is a frequent contributor to German television, writes for newspapers in Germany, and has written two amazing books about Christian nationalism and politics in the United States. Her and I have also written a piece together in the past for NBC News, and there's really no one else I think could do this interview better than Annika, and that includes myself.

So without further ado, enjoy their conversation and listen in on what lies ahead for Opus Dei.

Annika Brockschmidt: So I'm here with Gareth Gore. He's a journalist and expert on Opus Dei, and he's here today to talk to us about some recent headlines that have shaken up the Catholic right.

To start things up, could you maybe give us—I know this is a lot to ask—but maybe a short history of Opus Dei and the role they play, especially in contemporary politics in Washington?

Gareth Gore: Obviously, it's been around for just 100 years, and it was born in the years just before the Spanish Civil War, at a point when Spanish society was really kind of torn in two. You had the workers rising up. They'd overthrown the monarchy in Spain. They were beginning to turn their backs on the church, which is critical.

And the Spanish priest, José María Escrivá, supposedly had this vision from God for this new organization, which started out with quite benign aims at first, but which very quickly—against this backdrop of social strife, and especially this backdrop of people turning their backs on and beginning to question the church—became much more of a politically militant movement.

He very specifically charged his followers with entering into battle against the enemies of Christ, and specifically with infiltrating the levers of power in society. He wanted them to infiltrate the governments, the worlds of business, journalism, to really be this reactionary force.

Fast forward to today, and you know, Opus Dei, wherever it's expanded in the world, has done so with that aim of penetrating the upper echelons of society.

In the US, it's really focused its expansion and its recruitment in the Washington DC area. Opus Dei has about 3,000 members in the States, and about 1,000 of them are in the Washington DC area alone.

Annika: Oh, wow.

Gareth: I mean, I was kind of surprised by that myself when I first discovered that. You would expect, as a Catholic organization, that its followers would be focused in the big Catholic cities like Boston, New York, Miami these days, Chicago. But no, Washington DC. And that's because this is an organization which is very much by invitation only, unlike the rest of the Catholic Church.

You can just knock on the door of your local church and say, "Hey, how do I become a member?" Without Opus Dei, they find you and they invite you in. And so they very much focus their recruitment efforts in the Washington DC area.

Today, if you lift any kind of conservative stone in Washington DC, you're bound to find someone who's either a member of Opus Dei or affiliated to Opus Dei in some way.

Just to show the kind of extent and the heights of Opus Dei's recruitment in the States:

You've got people like Kevin Roberts, who's the president of the very powerful Heritage Foundation think tank, the architect of this thing called Project 2025—he's very much affiliated to Opus Dei. He visits the Opus Dei center in central DC regularly to get spiritual formation from them.

You've got people like Leonard Leo, who is, I guess, the architect of this conservative Catholic takeover of the US Supreme Court. He is a director of the Opus Dei center in central DC.

Other people affiliated to that center include the former Attorney General Bill Barr, Mick Mulvaney, the former White House Budget Director, Pat Cipollone, former White House Chief Counsel.

And there are numerous senators and Congress people who are also affiliated to this group. So they've really very successfully, I would argue, penetrated the Washington conservative religious elite.

Annika: To set up the news piece that we're going to talk about, I think we have to briefly touch on the recent relationship between the Vatican and Opus Dei, because they have been in a kind of standoff for a couple of years now, at least publicly. Could you briefly outline for us what this conflict is about?

Gareth: Opus Dei, officially, is of course loyal to the Pope. Whatever he asks of them, they do—not quite the way it's been working the past few years.

So basically, it all started like three years ago when Pope Francis decided the time had come to take action against Opus Dei. From my reporting, it was quite clear that he'd had a few run-ins with this group during his time as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, and he'd really been quite unhappy about the way that they'd operated almost outside of the normal hierarchy of the church.

They'd been free—and this was a power that had been given to them by John Paul II in the early 80s. He basically gave them this new label for them within the church. They were given this label—they were called a personal prelature, the only personal prelature ever to have existed in the entire history of the church.

Annika: That's very unusual, right? I mean, this was a status that was created for Opus Dei.

Gareth: It was. I mean, the doors were opened to personal prelatures as part of Vatican II. This was kind of a possibility, but it was mainly designed for hierarchical associations—associations of priests.

But what Opus Dei did was—they'd been wanting some new designation for many, many years. Its founder had been hunting around for this since at least the late 50s. And they saw in this new creation potential. They basically persuaded the Pope and the Vatican to change this thing that was meant just for priests and associations of priests to be all-encompassing for all members of Opus Dei.

98% of Opus Dei members are laypeople. And so they very successfully—against many voices in the Vatican, including Cardinal Ratzinger, later obviously Pope Benedict XVI, who was dead against this—many people were dead against this, but they had this special designation, and it caused all kinds of tensions in the church.

At the same time, there were all these abuse allegations against the group as well—allegations that it was:

• Spiritually abusing its members
• Using spiritual guidance sessions to push them into certain things against their will
• Psychologically, emotionally, even physically abusing its members
• Actively recruiting and grooming children

All of these horrendous issues around the organization.

So Pope Francis decided in 2022 the time had finally come to take action. He effectively put the group on notice and said, "You need to sort your house out. You need to rip up your constitution and start again."

Opus Dei just dragged its feet and dragged its feet. So a year later, the Pope issued a second motu proprio where he said, "Enough's enough." He basically tore up the authority they had over the lay members and made it quite clear that they were going to be very much demoted in the hierarchy of the church.

Since then, we've had this standoff where he'd basically been given a chance, they threw that chance away, and then the Pope made it quite clear: "We're going to really drive through these serious reforms."

Then there was this whole to-and-fro. Opus Dei was told to go rewrite its constitution, to work with the Dicastery of the Clergy, to agree on a text. They dragged their feet for two years.

And then just before Francis died in April, the text was ready. Opus Dei finally convened a meeting of its senior members, got them all to come to Rome where they were going to approve this text that had been agreed with the Vatican.

What happened? All of these people gather in Rome, are about to vote—Pope Francis dies. So they immediately cancel the vote. They say it's because it's not the time, out of respect for the Pope, we'll hold this vote another time.

Another less sympathetic reading of that is that they thought: "Here's an opportunity. This is what Francis wanted. Maybe the next guy will be more friendly." And so they canceled the vote.

Everyone was like, "What's the new Pope going to do?"

Interestingly, the very first thing, one of the very first meetings, very first audiences that the new Pope Leo gave was with the head of Opus Dei. He basically summoned the head of Opus Dei to the Vatican to find out what was going on.

And Opus Dei tried to spin that meeting and say, "Look how close we are to the Pope. It's a new start, a new beginning."

Annika: I remember that, yeah.

Gareth: And everyone's been on tenterhooks since to see what's going on, including myself. It's been very difficult to read. On the one hand, the Pope's been giving what seemed like concessions to Opus Dei, but now we know that in the background this whole thing was working through as well. So yes, it's been a very interesting few years.

Annika: Now a couple of days ago, Info Vaticana, a Spanish Catholic website, published a report that was potentially really explosive. Gareth, can you sum up for us, first of all, what this report claimed? And then, in a second step, because I just mentioned the name of the website who published it—what is Info Vaticana? And can we trust this report? And if not, why?

Gareth: So this report, if it's true, is an absolutely bombshell move.

The report at its core is saying that Opus Dei is going to be effectively disbanded. It's going to be split in three:

1. Opus Dei from now on is basically just going to be a group of priests. Only priests will belong to Opus Dei, which means that 98% of its members are being cast out. The 98% of lay members are being cast out. They will no longer officially be members of Opus Dei. So that's going to be one part.
   
   
2. The second part will be that there are lots of priests who weren't ordained inside of Opus Dei, but who later decided they like what it does and want to be part of it. So they'll be part of this second group, which kind of already exists, called the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross. You'll have Opus Dei priests in one group, you'll have this Priestly Society of the Holy Cross—other priests who want to be affiliated to Opus Dei.
   
   
3. And then the rest of the members—that 98% of members who currently make up the body of Opus Dei—they will be allowed to kind of voluntarily associate with Opus Dei. But the report makes it quite clear that Opus Dei will no longer have any jurisdiction or authority over them, and their spiritual journey will be through the local diocese, just like the rest of ordinary Catholics.

So Opus Dei is going to be ripped apart, effectively disbanded.

Gareth: So what is this website that's published this? This is Info Vaticana, which is a Spanish website set up by a guy who, in his youth at least, was a member of Opus Dei and who kind of let his membership lapse, but has stayed very close to them.

This website is extremely conservative, often publishes very pro-Opus Dei pieces. It's kind of funny, because in the run-up to the Conclave in May, they were publishing all kinds of smear pieces against progressive candidates, including the current Pope. They published this whole dossier about him supposedly having mishandled abuse cases in Peru. They were the first ones actually—subsequently other people have reported this—but they were the first ones to publish the accusations.

And they do have a record of getting scoops on Opus Dei. So they're clearly well plugged in. They know what's going on. They're clearly talking to people inside of Opus Dei and talking to people inside the Vatican.

Now, whether this is 100% true, I do not know. But there have been other things that happened in the last few days which make me think that this is indeed true.

Annika: Do you have an example?

Gareth: So the day after this report first came out, the head of Opus Dei released a letter to the membership where he was kind of saying that, you know, change is coming, but we have to remain loyal to the ways of the family. We have to continue these family traditions.

And another line I picked up on was, he was basically saying that we need to remain unified, and these small customs, things that bind us together. So the subtext was: "Yeah, there's going to be big change coming. It's going to rip us apart, but the reasons you joined Opus Dei are still there, and all these little things that we do that kind of make us different—carry on doing them, no matter what the law says. We should carry on with these traditions."

Annika: Maybe just to reiterate this, let's dig a bit more into the detail of the changes that, if this report is true, Pope Leo could implement.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that essentially Opus Dei the way it would change the organization—if what this report outlines actually happens—this would be not just a drastic change, but the organization would kind of cease to exist in the way that it has until now.

So I'm just interested: What do you think could be the motivation for the Pope to implement these changes now? Do you think this is a longer-standing theological conflict? Do you think it's also, in part, an attempt to counter the very negative press that obviously has sort of accumulated over the last couple of years? We don't know, we can't look into his head, but what's your assessment of that?

Gareth: I guess the simple answer to that is that he didn't choose to take this on. This was just something that was lying in his inbox when he got the job, and something that he just has had to sort out.

But why has this been happening? I guess why did Francis take this on? And why has Pope Leo decided that yes, he needs to see this through, rather than just leave them be?

I think it's pretty obvious to me that this is all about the abuse allegations against the group, and specifically the spiritual abuse allegations.

Former members have made it quite clear that—and we talked earlier about how the group targets its recruits, it grooms them—from speaking to more than 100 former members and members who haven't just been recruited themselves, but have been part of this recruitment mechanism, it's quite clear that what happens is: once Opus Dei decides that you're a target, the way that they basically coerce people into becoming members.

And once you're a full member, you're then expected to do these regular things that they call, very euphemistically, "the chat" or "the confidence."

So every—in addition to confessing and attending Mass and performing these other rituals that Opus Dei members do (infamously, whipping themselves and wearing the cilice)—you're also expected to do this thing called the chat or the confidence, which used to be called a manifestation of conscience.

Forced manifestations of conscience were basically outlawed by the Vatican in 1890, I think it was. But Opus Dei's constitution makes it quite clear that as a member, it's a requirement of membership to do these manifestations of conscience.

Annika: Sorry, just to interject—for non-Catholic listeners, can you explain what that means, a manifestation of conscience?

Gareth: Well, in Opus Dei—I mean, traditionally these were quite common for religious orders especially—it's kind of, I guess in very simple terms, in confession you confess your sins. In these sessions, what happens—and this is certainly what happens in the Opus Dei world these days—is that you're expected to talk about every aspect of your life.

So you talk about your home life, your sex life, your work life. You talk about any thoughts you're having about political happenings in the world or whatever. So they're like therapy sessions, I guess. But you don't just have someone listening to you. The other person involved in this conversation is giving you advice according to their reading of the Bible.

And the advice is not being given by a priest. It's by an Opus Dei celibate member, a lay member. Opus Dei members are required to do this.

Some former members certainly have argued that this is forced upon them. It's not just a requirement—it's something that's absolutely expected, and if you do not do it, you're cast out.

And the allegation is that Opus Dei has used these sessions to collect information. Very personal information is gathered in these conversations. Report cards are written down by the lay member giving the sessions. And these report cards are then handed up the chain to the national headquarters.

So one, they use it to collect information. But also they use these spiritual guidance sessions to gently push the person to do things that might be beneficial for Opus Dei—whether that's donating more money, whether that's encouraging them to start a new school, or whatever.

These sessions are not used to advance the spiritual life of the member or to address problems that the member themselves have brought up, but to advance the agenda of Opus Dei.

So I think that's the main reason that the Pope has decided that action has to be taken—because of the widespread spiritual abuse.

But also, there are other things going on as well. There are two very serious outstanding complaints at the Vatican:

1. One from a group of Argentinian women who alleged that they were coerced into joining as kids, that they were basically enslaved by the organization and forced to work as unpaid domestic servants for decades. That arrived at the Vatican in I think it was 2021, so just a few months ahead of the first motu proprio.
   
   
2. Since then, there's been another formal complaint by dozens of former members who allege all kinds of spiritual, emotional, psychological, physical abuse.

So yeah, I think the reason that the Pope is acting is these various reports of abuse against the group, spiritual and otherwise.

Annika: You've done a lot of investigative reporting on Opus Dei. You've written a book about the organization, and you've detailed the abusive practices that you've observed, that you've reported on. Do you think the modifications and the reforms that Pope Leo might take—if they happen as they're outlined in this report—do you think that's enough?

Gareth: No. I mean, I think—and in a way, I'm quite disappointed with the way that the Vatican and Pope Francis and Pope Leo have gone about this.

I've been working with a group of former members of Opus Dei, and we've been hammering on the door of the Vatican saying, "Guys, we have information." We've been trying to do this very subtly. We kept all of this private until recently. We've been knocking on the door saying, "We can help you if you think that reform of this organization is necessary. You need to understand how it works."

And how it works isn't just simply reading through the statutes and finding alterations that might work for both parties. It's understanding how Opus Dei works day to day—how it recruits, how it coerces people, how these spiritual guidance sessions work, and in general, how this organization functions.

We have information that we can offer you that can help you to understand. And our overtures to the Vatican have been completely ignored.

We know that the way the Vatican works, there are all kinds of people who try to stop things reaching the desks of people higher up. And so we sent four different letters via different routes. We had confirmation from somebody that works in the office of Pope Leo that at least one of the letters had reached his desk. So we know that he is aware of our offer, but we've been met with complete silence.

So first of all, the offer was there to help them to get these reforms right.

I think, from my reading of the reforms, they come from the right place. They're trying to do the right thing, but they do not understand the way that this organization works.

There are the statutes, the official constitution of Opus Dei, which was approved by the Vatican in the early 1980s. But that's not what dictates the way that things happen inside the organization at all.

There are hundreds of pages of secret documents that were written by the group's founder, this Spanish priest José María Escrivá. Through the 1930s and 1940s, he wrote literally hundreds of pages of rules dictating even the tiniest bits of life inside, how it should work.

Now, if you're a member of Opus Dei, you believe that these writings from the founder—he wrote out his vision, he told everyone that this vision had come directly from God, this was a divinely inspired group, this was a divinely inspired way of life. And so if you're a member of Opus Dei, you believe that the founder's writings, the rules that he said that you have to live by, they came directly from God.

And so for the Pope to say, "You can't do things that way anymore," it just doesn't work, because you still believe that this guy had this divine inspiration, that these rules for life in Opus Dei came directly from God.

Annika: What's more, José María Escrivá today is a saint in the Catholic Church.

Gareth: I was about to ask that.

Annika: So that makes the argument from the Pope's side more difficult, right? Because he can't really—if he doesn't want to go against a saint—he kind of has to hold up the basis of Opus Dei, the origin story, so to speak.

Gareth: I think the only way of really getting to grips with the abuse inside of Opus Dei—which is not just something that's evolved over the years and people have become bad, this abuse has crept in—a lot of these abusive practices are stipulated in the writings of Escrivá. Life inside of Opus Dei is based on these abusive practices. It's what the founder wanted. It's supposedly what God wanted, if you believe what the founder said.

So yeah, I think the only way of really getting to grips with these abuses is to call into question this foundational story of Opus Dei.

And I'm sorry to say, but I think the Pope also has to reopen the canonization of Escrivá.

There was a huge scandal when he was made into a saint in 2002, and when he was beatified in the early 90s as well. Former members tried to have their voices heard. People who lived with this guy tried to have their voices heard at the Vatican. They were turned away. Opus Dei launched a campaign to smear these people and say that they weren't reliable witnesses. The Vatican completely sided with Opus Dei.

So there are grounds for reopening the canonization of Escrivá. And in my eyes, that's a way to really push real reform—by revoking the sainthood and forcing Opus Dei to hand over all of these hidden documents that it's sitting on, that it's using to dictate how it runs its organization.

Hand them all over to the Vatican. Have the Vatican pore through them and decide which elements of life in Opus Dei should remain and what should be banned. Because at the moment, to just rewrite the statutes is—the real dedicated members of Opus Dei are going to ignore the statutes and they're going to follow the word of Escrivá above that of the Pope.

Annika: What do you think—is there something that Opus Dei is going to try to do to stop this? What can they do to try and stop the reforms if they are imminent?

Gareth: I mean, I think again, coming back to the letter that the head of Opus Dei wrote to membership the day after this report came out, he said:

"We must not become discouraged in the face of the external difficulties that come with the times and places in which we live."

And so the subtext there, I believe, is he's saying: "This is a difficult moment for us. The current Pope and maybe the previous Pope were against us, are against us. But these things will pass. Another time will come when another Pope will reassert the true meaning of Opus Dei, and it's our task to carry on."

He said: "The work is in our hands, like an inheritance received, a treasure that we must collaborate in making fruitful and passing on."

So: "We'll let this—whatever the Vatican says, even if we're told to stop doing these practices—we have this inheritance that we have to carry on. We need to pass on to the next generation, in the hope that there'll be another conservative Pope one day who sees the light."

What I think is going to happen is that publicly, Opus Dei will comply and they'll nod their heads—"Of course, Pope Leo, we will do what you ask of us"—but that the real Opus Dei will be driven underground. These practices will carry on, but they'll carry on out of sight, and it's going to become even more difficult for the Vatican to keep tabs on what's going on. That's what I fear is going to happen.

I mean, I've been talking to former members over the past few days about what they make of it, and I think there are some people who are more optimistic than me. They hope that with this clear slap on the wrists and this clear removal of the overall sovereignty over lay members, they think that it's going to become more difficult for Opus Dei to recruit the next generation, and that slowly the group will just die out and just become this group of priests.

But Opus Dei has enormous resources at its disposal:

More than 300 schools around the world. More than a dozen, I think almost 20 in fact, universities. All these things are run at arm's length—they're not officially run by Opus Dei, but they're run by Opus Dei-affiliated groups

Just in terms of money as well: In the US alone, there are more than 100 nonprofits which are affiliated to Opus Dei, with almost a billion dollars of assets between them. That's just the US.

Now, the US is not the largest country by any means for Opus Dei. I'm sure the resources that Opus Dei has indirectly in Spain and Italy, Mexico, across Latin America are far greater than that. We're talking at least, as a very minimum, several billion dollars of resources.

These reforms that are being pushed through by the Vatican won't even touch any of that.

So I fear that what's going to happen is that, like I said, on the face of it, they'll agree and comply. But then you've got this underground network of foundations with enormous resources that will carry on pushing this message of "the great saint José María" and his teachings and how we must follow them and be faithful to the writings of our great founder.

Yeah, I don't see the reforms really having a huge impact, other than a bit of bad publicity for the group in the short term. And they've proven themselves very, very adept at taking on bad publicity. So yeah, they'll get through this.

Annika: Gareth, thank you so much for your time. If you're listening, you can find Gareth's book, Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church, wherever books are sold.

And that's it from us, and back to you, Brad.

Thanks for listening today. I hope you enjoyed the conversation between Gareth and Annika, and you learned a lot about what's happening with Opus Dei, and what Opus Dei is and does and why it's such a threat to our democracy and to people all over the world.

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