We shine a light on the ‘dark money’ behind a shady Catholic organization – The Irish Times

Few religious institutions capture the public imagination as much as Opus Dei, the deeply secretive, conservative Catholic organization founded in Spain nearly a century ago. Some thriller writers might have found it necessary to invent them if they hadn’t existed.

Members’ names remain unknown, including among themselves, unless they are themselves announced or listed as Opus Dei officials. His practices include self-flagellation and wearing a chain noose on the thigh to induce pain (as a reminder of Christ’s suffering).

What’s not to like when you’re a writer looking for a villain? Who could blame Dan Brown for making his albino assassin monk Silas from the Da Vinci Code a member of Opus Dei? Even though there are no monks in Opus Dei, neither albinos nor others.

Opus Dei, for its part, presents itself as a predominantly lay-oriented organization with a few clergy that focuses on the pursuit of personal holiness in everyday life. So there’s nothing to see there. Maybe not. Then maybe?

The former Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, fondly recalled how Pope Benedict asked him in 2007: “Where are the points of contact between the Church in Ireland and the areas where the future of Irish culture is being formed?” The Pope, too just as his predecessor Pope John Paul II was a strong supporter of Opus Dei, pointed out that where the future of Irish culture is being shaped, the Church should also be there. Fair enough, if open.

It is a strategy that Opus Dei has used for most of the century since its founding in 1928, but “discreetly”, for example by targeting education, not least universities, such as in Ireland. It is precisely this secrecy that has bred distrust of the institution, with some seeing it as an outright deception designed to give Opus Dei its conservative Catholic style when it comes to public policy.

Social justice issues, for example, tend to be of less interest to Opus Dei members whose focus is personal spirituality. Some claim that this reduces Christianity to an ideology that has particular appeal to the political right.

This is why, of 19 ministers in Franco’s 1969 Spanish government, “ten were allied with Opus Dei,” as Gareth Gore reports in this deeply disturbing and important book that should concern anyone who believes in that blessed trinity of modern democracy – openness , transparency and accountability. It is a warning and an example of how a small, motivated group with strong financial support can succeed in imposing their will on the majority.

More immediately relevant than 1960s Spain, it shows how Opus Dei managed to reshape the current U.S. Supreme Court in its own image and likeness. As the author reveals, it played a key role in the conversion to right-wing Catholicism of former US Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, whose wife Callista Louise was appointed US ambassador to the Vatican by US President Donald Trump in 2017.

That same year, Trump appointed right-wing, Catholic-raised Neil Gorsuch 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 that year’s presidential election, the book describes Opus Dei’s Leonard Leo’s key role in ensuring that Amy Coney Barrett, a protégé of Antonin Scalia and conservative Catholic, was appointed to the Supreme Court.

This prompted Leo’s “good friend,” conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to “jokingly” refer to him as “the third most powerful man in the world, probably behind the Pope and the President of the United States,” the author recalls.

Leonard Leo is a board member of the Opus Dei Catholic Information Center in Washington and executive vice president of the Federalist Society, which opposes liberal interpretations of the U.S. Constitution.

Judge Thomas’ wife, Gianni, an adviser to Trump, is also described by Gore as a “close friend of Leonard Leo” and they worked together on various right-wing campaigns.

According to him, “other prominent members of the Washington Opus Dei network” during this Trump administration included White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Attorney General Bill Barr and the director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow. As Gore notes: “Not since the Franco regime [in 1960s Spain] Would the movement have had such direct access to political power?

He recounts how Leonard Leo and other Opus Dei grandees played a successful role in the appointment of Justices Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, all conservative Catholics.

Today, of the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court, five – Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito and Comey Barrett – are current or former members of the Federalist Society, while Chief Justice John Roberts sat on its steering committee in Washington DC, but he insists that he was never a member of society itself.

All of this is made possible by money, which is sometimes referred to in this book as “dark money”. This is where Opus’s great strength lies. Gore is a financial journalist, and it shows in his diligent tracking of money from Opus Dei’s humble beginnings in Spain to its current enormous wealth, and how it has used that financial power to buy its way to influence and power .

He examines how Opus Dei, through clever corporate law and the commitment of its members, eventually controlled the Banco Popular in Spain, its collapse, recovery and the accumulation of vast wealth in the United States, which is used to recruit ever more new members – the main purpose of Opus Dei – and how that money was used so successfully to promote a right-wing political agenda.

He explains how the growth of Opus Dei was greatly facilitated, above all, by Pope John Paul II, who moved heaven and earth (canon law) to enable and promote it, and how this was done by his successor, Pope Benedict XVI . was supported.

Things have changed completely since Pope Francis was elected in Rome in 2013. He has stripped Opus Dei and its estimated 90,000 members worldwide of many of the privileges and status bestowed by the previous two popes. There are also allegations of sexual abuse against leading Opus Dei clergy and actions by women who claim to have been forced into unpaid servitude by it.

In Ireland, Opus Dei has an estimated 400 members, 18 of whom are priests, including the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore Phonsie Cullinan, the only Opus Dei bishop in the Irish Bishops’ Conference. He was criticized for allowing the Catholic Unscripted group, which claims Pope Francis has “abandoned Jesus”, to hold a weekend retreat earlier this month at Glencomeragh House in Waterford, owned by his diocese. In a recent statement, the diocese distanced itself from “the alleged views” of the Catholic newspaper Unscripted, which is critical of Pope Francis.