Review: Opus Dei, inside and out
Pope Francis greets Msgr.Reading the pages of Gareth Gore’s Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church in the days leading up to Halloween last fall was a scary endeavor.
The reader will encounter in these pages a frenetic journey through the last near-century of the Catholic Church’s only personal prelature, Opus Dei. Many will be familiar with how Opus Dei has been portrayed in popular media in the two decades since the publication of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. Gareth Gore, a financial reporter who did not set out to write a book on Opus Dei, examines Brown’s work along with many other seminal moments in the history of this controversial Catholic group.
The first thing to note about Opus is the tremendous amount of research that went into the project. This involved serious attention to many published works on the prelature, personal interviews with present and former members of Opus Dei (including significant leadership figures), and archival research materials.
Opus Dei was founded in 1928 to be an association of mostly lay Catholics who would seek holiness through their daily activities and secular jobs. Most members are supernumeraries, which means they can be married and live independently, in their own homes; others are numeraries, making a promise of celibacy and living in Opus Dei centers in community. A few thousand women are members at the rank of numerary assistants, to serve the male numeraries; there are associates who, like numeraries, are celibate, but live outside an Opus Dei residence; and, finally, there are fewer than 2,000 members of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, who report directly to the superior of Opus Dei.
When Gore began his research, he meant for the resulting project to be a deep dive into the Spanish bank Banco Popular, which collapsed in 2017. Through his investigation, Gore discovered a group known as “The Syndicate” that was responsible for funding Banco Popular. The dissolution of the companies that comprised The Syndicate was simultaneous with the bank’s collapse, and this concurrence of events brought Gore into greater touch with the secretive world of Opus Dei. The religious organization was involved because many of the major players in Opus Dei were also major players in the bank, none more so than the Spanish financier and influential Opus Dei member Luis Valls-Taberner.
Gore structures his book around three complementary narratives: one financial, one political and one ecclesial. While there is also some history involved in this study, it almost always serves to advance one of Gore’s three main trajectories. The financial account is where Gore is obviously most at home. Valls-Taberner’s illness and death, the role his membership in Opus Dei played in the sidelining of his brother Javier from his role in the bank, and the details of infighting to take over the reins of the bank are all fascinating aspects of this account.
This is all new material that Gore has uncovered through painstaking research and careful tracing of otherwise vague and disjointed lines. He is to be commended for making these links, particularly between The Syndicate and Banco Popular before the bank’s collapse. Gore did his homework: “Tracing the flow of money through the various layers of companies, it seemed the beneficiaries [of the bank] were charitable foundations with one thing in common—links to Opus Dei.”
Gore does a fine job of discovering where the money came from, where it went and how Opus Dei was involved, always doing its part to be dissociated from the bank; though there was no paper trail that led back to Opus Dei as an organization at any point, Gore clearly shows the connections. This is the greatest achievement of the book and a major development beyond John Allen’s reporting in his 2005 work, Opus Dei.
The political narrative of the book can trace itself from the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco right through Donald J. Trump. The link, oddly enough, is Opus Dei’s founder, Saint Josemaría (originally “José María,” as Gore tells us) Escrivá. At one stage, Escrivá gave a “private, six-day retreat for [Franco] and his wife at the El Pardo palace, where they lived.” Even though Escrivá insisted Opus Dei would operate above politics, he maintained a personal relationship with Franco, and the dictator was a benefactor to both Escrivá and Opus Dei.
Skip ahead a few generations, to when the U.S. political operative Leonard Leo enters the picture. In recent years, it has become clear that no history of Catholicism in the United States in the 21st century will be possible without a careful focus on Leo, whose financial resources and political connections are perhaps without compare in Washington. Leo’s longtime connection with the Federalist Society alone has shaped the U.S. Supreme Court for generations to come, as President Trump appointed three judges recommended by Leo for the current court. While Gore notes that Leo is not himself a member of Opus Dei, Leo is a significant contributor to Opus Dei causes and has many financial and organizational links with the prelature.
Gore dives into the details of these backroom channels, while also tracing Leo’s traditional brand of Catholicism and his links of varying degrees to other members of the first Trump administration––some of whom are members of Opus Dei, and others of whom serve on the board of the Catholic Information Center, which is always staffed by an Opus Dei chaplain and has obvious ties to the organization. As Gore concludes, “Not since the Franco regime had the movement had such direct access to political power” as it does in the United States today.
It was Escrivá’s writings and worldview, Gore notes, that laid the groundwork for this type of clout in the world.
If Opus Dei has been riding high politically as of late, it has been in decline in church circles, which represents an underreported shift in Pope Francis’ pontificate. Gore does well to call this shift to our attention. While there are two Opus Dei members in the College of Cardinals, both of them (Julián Herranz and Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne) have aged out of voting eligibility. Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles, also a member of Opus Dei, has never been elevated to cardinal despite leading the largest archdiocesan church in the United States.
Even more troublesome for Opus Dei in terms of its church influence is that their current leader, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, is the first man to hold the position of prelate of Opus Dei (its ultimate superior) and not be an ordained bishop. This is not a clerical oversight, but an explicit decision made by Pope Francis in a 2022 motu proprio.
The following year, Francis published a second motu proprio that changed two canons concerning personal prelatures. (Created by Pope John Paul II, personal prelatures are canonical structures in the Catholic Church that operate independently of dioceses. Remember, Opus Dei is currently the only one!) These canons especially deal with the place of the laity, who comprise the overwhelming majority of Opus Dei’s membership.
Tim Busch of the Napa Institute, who has been closely linked with Opus Dei, told Gore, “I think something important is happening, something not so good. I think [Francis] is tightening the noose, but I don’t think he’s going to have enough time.” Gore explains the position of Opus Dei as more fraught now than at any other time in its history, noting that the prelature is “preparing itself for more direct [papal] intervention.” Only time will tell what the future of the organization is within the church.
This review would not be complete without acknowledging that Opus Dei has responded to the book with a press release. They claim that Gore gained access to various members of Opus Dei under the false pretenses of writing a book about Luis Valls-Taberner. However, Gore himself has stated that the subject of the book changed as he was researching it.
As for Opus Dei’s other concerns expressed in the press release, most of their explanations do not disprove Gore’s findings. Opus Dei says that the prelature had “no role” in the events surrounding the collapse of Banco Popular. That is exactly what we would expect from the prelature after reading Gore’s argument on this point. Opus Dei as an organization goes to great pains to remove itself from direct involvement in financial, political and ecclesial scandals. And yet, as Gore painstakingly shows, Opus Dei’s influence is never far from such controversies and, in some cases, serious crimes.
Opus Dei members, for example, have contended that women and children haven’t been abused by their organization or by influential members within the group. Yet simply saying that Gore’s allegations are false does not disprove the voluminous interviews and other evidence Gore uncovered—and Opus Dei has not provided evidence for its claim.
This is not a perfect book. At times, it would have been improved had a theologian or Vatican analyst edited some of Gore’s writings on the church. This misgiving notwithstanding, Opus has certainly become required reading on the subject of Opus Dei.
We will soon see how Opus Dei’s role in the church evolves. That will then determine how it will work politically. In the meantime, follow the money. We are indebted to Gore for this reminder.
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