At the University of Notre Dame in the early 2000s, the campus-ministry office distributed fliers around campus chapels warning students against participating in various lay movements that might recruit them to off-campus centers, describing them essentially as cults. One of these was Opus Dei. Its recruitment functioned by informal invitation from students and faculty, and its off-campus centers (one for men, one for women) were named like corporate retreat facilities, much in the manner of their New York headquarters, Murray Hill Place. Each featured a chapel, hosted Masses, and offered off-campus housing; they distributed Catholic reading materials and held weekly reflections, group discussions, and other events. Recruits (and, eventually, members) tended to be more conservative in their religious understanding and their politics, forming communities of the like-minded, as college students are wont. What was there to be afraid of?
Since the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code in 2003, “Opus Dei” has become shorthand in the popular imagination for a secretive cabal of power-hungry Catholics. Brown sets his story in a milieu of old-world Gothic treachery (and, indeed, Opus Dei is heavily shaped by its European origins), complete with an albino monk, but the reality is more prosaic and contemporary. To probe the power of Opus Dei, as Gareth Gore demonstrates in his new book, one must look not to monastic cells but to corporate C-suites, centers of political power, and the educational institutions where elites are trained. His “follow the money” approach reveals less a shadowy conspiracy than one hiding in plain sight.
Gore, a British financial journalist, comes to the subject of Opus Dei as an outsider, his interest sparked by the dramatic 2017 crash of Banco Popular, once Spain’s largest bank. As it turned out, Luis Valls-Taberner, the director of Banco Popular at the height of its influence (1972 to 2004, to be exact) was an Opus Dei numerary—a totally committed celibate member of the organization with vows similar to those of formal religious life. Valls-Taberner seemingly left the bank in good shape when he retired, but his death and the dispute over how to handle the bank’s Opus Dei–controlled shares given his status as a numerary proved to be its undoing.
Gore begins with Banco Popular’s unraveling, returning to it throughout the book as he traces the founding of Opus Dei by the young priest Josemaria Escrivá in 1930s Spain and its growth over the next ninety years. Escrivá comes across in Gore’s telling as an operator and an opportunist. He took full advantage of the benefits available for (conservative) Catholic institutions in Franco’s Spain and worked assiduously to curry favor at the Vatican and establish a place for Opus Dei in the structure of the Church. Gore also portrays him as vain, paranoid, and manipulative; Escrivá’s practice of secretly placing recording devices inside Opus Dei houses—quietly discontinued after his death—is particularly disturbing. Though the founder would not be alone among the saints in terms of unsaintly behavior, Gore’s account ought to lead to renewed questions about the speed of Escrivá’s canonization under John Paul II (not to mention the latter’s under Pope Francis), whose papacy solidified Opus Dei’s status as a prominent and powerful movement.
Opus Dei is often framed as a “lay movement” associated with or even seen at the vanguard of Church reform brought about by Vatican II. But as Gore demonstrates, this is more than a little misleading. Escrivá’s own feelings about the Council were mixed, though Opus Dei itself has stayed far from traditionalist criticisms of Vatican II. More fundamentally, Opus Dei reproduces many aspects of clericalism—beginning with clerics, who have an outsized influence in its leadership and structure. Opus Dei’s incorporation as a personal prelature reinforced this dynamic and made it irreformable at the top, since the prelate is by necessity a cleric. The apparatus of power and means of control exercised over members—a frequent critique from those who end up leaving—similarly parallels the dynamics of clerical power in the Church.
Perhaps of particular interest to American Catholics is Gore’s recounting of the saga of the late Rev. C. John McCloskey III. Those of a certain age might recall that McCloskey directed the Catholic Information Center (an Opus Dei–run bookstore and downtown hub) in Washington D.C. He was a leading conservative Catholic public figure in the late 1990s and early 2000s, notable for facilitating the conversion of Newt Gingrich and Robert Bork. McCloskey suddenly disappeared from public view in 2002, at the height of his power and fame. It was not until 2019 that the reason came to light: he had engaged in sexual misconduct during spiritual direction. He additionally remained in ministry subsequent to his dismissal from the Catholic Information Center. What would have been a bombshell revelation at the time (coincident with the Boston Globe Spotlight investigations) was an afterthought two decades later.
At any rate, McCloskey’s sudden disappearance hardly diminished the role of Opus Dei in the capital’s conservative Catholic apparatus. Money connected to Opus Dei funds significant portions of it (largely under the umbrella of the Catholic Association), as well as institutes and organizations outside D.C. such as the Witherspoon Institute and James Madison Program at Princeton University. One does not need access to Opus Dei’s headquarters in New York or Rome to see the signs of its power and influence. They’re evident in the priorities of the second Trump administration, which, like the first one, is staffed by many people connected to the organization. Project 2025, for example, bears the unmistakable fingerprints of some of the foundations most closely linked to Opus Dei. This is not, as in the anti-Catholic conspiracy theories of old, a matter of acolytes blindly following orders from above. Rather, it’s a programmatic approach fueled by a corporate-like concentration of resources and implementation of best practices. If anything, Gore’s approach demythologizes and concretizes Opus Dei; a sympathetic reader might come away knowing how to get involved.
In a tawdry but telling story, Gore details the rivalry between Opus Dei and the Legionaries of Christ that came to light during the legal and financial proceedings following Valls-Taberner’s death. The Legionaries, founded in Mexico not long after Opus Dei by the disgraced Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, also included a lay movement, Regnum Christi; both have suffered huge losses in membership and ecclesial influence following revelations about Maciel’s serial sexual abuse and its coverup within the order and the Church. Gore reveals that Banco Popular’s downfall might in part be rooted in revenge for Opus Dei’s continued ecclesial power vis-à-vis the Legionaries. It may sound sensationalistic, but it is grounded in fact, and further, Gore’s account helps clarify something about the “new ecclesial movements” and their influence.
Opus Dei, along with the Legionaries, is emblematic of many conservative Catholic institutions whose causes were supported during the papacy of John Paul II. They promised a significantly renewed version of Catholicism yet reduplicated old tendencies—particularly clericalism. Opus Dei’s involvement in the McCloskey sexual-abuse scandal exemplifies this point. Like many more traditional religious orders, Opus Dei used clericalist structures and its ability to whisk abusers to another state or country to handle such matters. Yet the popular perception of Opus Dei as a lay movement, and the lower profile of its clerics post-McCloskey, effectively insulates the movement from accountability on this point, except by the Vatican. The current standoff between Pope Francis and Opus Dei concerning institutional reform functions as the cliffhanger of Gore’s book: Francis clearly wants change, but the movement has tried to slow-walk reforms in the hopes of a friendlier approach from his successor.
What about the “human trafficking” mentioned in the book’s subtitle? It has to do with the recruitment of young women in various developing countries to be “numerary assistants,” working as housekeepers and cooks and in other such roles for the supernumerary members. Interpretations may differ on just what is going on with the numerary assistants. But “human trafficking” is ultimately a reasonable term to use (as the Argentine government has found in bringing formal charges) given what Gore learned about their recruitment and how they’re moved across international boundaries, often to perform menial and unpaid work. As with many mysteries surrounding Opus Dei, greater transparency would go a long way toward addressing this charge. Yet the very hiddenness of the assistants—who live in separate quarters and are prohibited from interacting with the numeraries whose needs they serve—keeps this arrangement out of sight and out of mind.
The limitations of Gore’s book stem mainly from its greatest strength, namely, its angle of approach. Framing the story around the Banco Popular scandal tells the story of Opus Dei “from the top,” from the perspective of some of its elite members, rather than from that of the more typical supernumerary members or sympathetic nonmembers who, for example, gladly send their children to Opus Dei high schools. They are the bulk of people who interact with Opus Dei on a daily basis, and they barely show up in these pages. A focus on the clerical and political elements of Opus Dei misses some influential lay members, such as theologian Scott Hahn at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Yet this perhaps reveals in its own way a contradiction present in Escrivá’s original vision: a movement dedicated to holiness in the world, but whose inner workings and hierarchy mimic the clerical structure with which its founder was intimate.
Also missing is a more thoroughgoing explication (with the exception of the Legionaries of Christ discussion) of Opus Dei’s relationship to other ecclesial movements, such as Communion and Liberation, the Focolare, or the Community of Sant’Egidio. The story of these other new movements, including the more diffuse Catholic Charismatic Renewal (most famously associated with Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett) would reveal a great deal about what has and has not changed in the Church since Vatican II.
Gore’s book is ultimately a refreshing outsider take on Opus Dei and the broader Catholic and sociopolitical dynamics the prelature influences. That he was unacquainted with intra-Catholic battles gives his book an energy and perspective that insider accounts often lack (he did, however, come to take sides while researching the story). For those poised to take exception to Gore’s characterization of Opus Dei, the book ought to provide an occasion for thinking about how it could more credibly live up to its claims as a movement for holiness—and not just power—in the world. Imagine: Opus Dei on the halting but real path along which Pope Francis is trying to lead the broader Church. Stranger things have happened.
Opus
The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church
Gareth Gore
Simon & Schuster
$30.99 | 448 pages
Want to learn more? Listen to Commonweal editor Dominic Preziosi’s conversation with Gareth Gore on the Commonweal Podcast here:
