u/Informal_Farm4064

Bishops say that all issues to do with the reform of Opus Dei are in the hands of the pope, as it's an international organisation. Yet here we have the morally bankrupt Catholic bishop of Salford (Manchester, UK) undermining the pope's position by opening the cause of the beatification of a child celibate recruit of Opus Dei - see https://dioceseofsalford.org.uk/cause-for-beatification-of-pedro-ballester/

Bishop John Arnold of Salford is clearly in the back pocket of Opus Dei. I have mentioned on this forum before how he secretly handed over St Bede's College, Manchester, to Opus Dei. This college has a shocking history of clergy abuse of kids, which its current Opus Dei management are whitewashing, along with the crimson tide of Opus Dei abuses which the current and previous popes have been struggling to get to grips with. I wrote to this bishop some time ago, very politely, to ask for transparency on Opus Dei and St Bede's College and I did not get the courtesy of a reply.

This shows how Opus Dei plays the Catholic hierarchy. When bishops raise issues with Opus Dei, they will say that only the pope has jurisdiction, which is not true but getting to the bottom of the canonical mess is something on which Opus Dei is adept at wearing out its challengers within the church.

At the same time, Opus Dei will buy off individual bishops for initiatives like this beatification. So the bishop has authority to act without the pope when it suits Opus Dei or not, again when it suits Opus Dei.

And so Opus Dei will schmooze its way through the Vatican corridors of power to advertise how modern and relevant it is in pursuing the cause of beatification of a young person. When challengers look into the issue of coercion of young people to join Opus Dei, they can pull out canonised saints of Opus Dei who committed to God young in their defence.

Let's remember that any decision to pursue the beatification or canonisation process for a member of Opus Dei starts in secret council meetings of Opus Dei. There is no sense of popular acclaim within Opus Dei or beyond. In fact, the spirit of freedom that would be needed for popular acclaim in the first place has been systematically erased from Opus Dei members through years of oppressive spiritual direction.

Misinformation officers of Opus Dei will be oozing their way around centres of Opus Dei and the Catholic media to plug the cause shamelessly, begging for prayers to get that one sure-fire miracle that can tick all the boxes for a beatification - an elaborate exercise in simony on a par with the sale of indulgences. All the saints in heaven, including those who were in Opus Dei on earth, turn away in horror.

If bishops and priests in the privacy of their own consciences feel likewise, they need to act and persuade the pope to call a halt to opportunistic beatification or canonisation causes, opened just a few years after death. It's their church. What kind of church do they want?

In my first article of today, I mentioned the "One by One" series on opusdei.org which are interviews with individuals about how Opus Dei has helped them. I mentioned that two of the interviews were with ex-members, including Laura from Barcelona, a doctor. The interview is also on YouTube - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw0Z-GNJOBY&list=PPSV&t=18s My comment below the video was removed quickly!

In the monologue, Laura tells us that she was a numerary of Opus Dei for 25 years until 2020, when she left at the age of 40. This means that she joined in her mid-teens - for her at the age of 15 - like the vast majority of celibate members. 

I am happy for her that she was able to leave and find a husband. She states that she is married to a fellow doctor, who is ▷ Dr. Gerardo Sáenz de Navarrete Ribera - Barraquer and who appears in her video and has a public online presence.

However, there are many celibate members of Opus Dei who leave after long periods and who are not so lucky to find love. For example, many former domestic servant members experienced much heavier psychological and physical exploitation than Laura and have been too traumatised to form stable romantic relationships, not to mention lost all their childbearing years to a false vocation to Opus Dei. Such women did most of Laura’s domestic duties in her home for 25 years, enabling her to follow her career. Laura doesn’t mention them.  

It’s notable that Laura regards all her years since the age of 15 as time when she was part of Opus Dei. This is consistent with the lived experience of Opus Dei members that, as soon as they ask to join Opus Dei, they are treated as full members, with no further meaningful discernment, even as a child. She adds: 

“The decision to join Opus Dei was entirely my own.” 

This seems scripted. Given that she joined at the age of 15, the idea of joining Opus Dei will have been proposed to her in a private chat by a priest or club leader of Opus Dei. She would have been in an atmosphere where committing to Opus Dei for life had been normalised and peer pressure as well as grooming pressure from the leaders would have been highly persuasive factors. What 15 year-old can give informed consent to a decision to commit for life to a celibate vocation once and for all without further discernment?

On leaving Opus Dei, she says it took a long time because 

“I always had the perspective that my vocation wasn’t a variable but a constant. I had never questioned it because it was deeply mine and precisely because I had made the decision freely.”

Again, this seems scripted. In reality, there is no scope for questioning one’s vocation because when you do so and are sincere about it with your spiritual director in Opus Dei, you are told not to question it. She is silent on the pressure she would have had to stay in Opus Dei, including likely veiled threats of gambling with one's eternal salvation. She and/or her Opus Dei handlers are being subtle in the choice of words. This is reprehensible. 

Laura was in Opus Dei for 25 years and out for about 5 years when she appeared in this video. She has several close relatives in Opus Dei. She has lived her whole life in the Opus Dei ecosystem. This is very early days for her to have processed much of her Opus Dei trauma, and no doubt, she has a busy job helping many people. She will still be in very deep denial about her participation in the grooming of potential recruits to commit to Opus Dei that she participated in since the age of 15. 

As a doctor, she will have been something of a local celebrity in Opus Dei and been exempt from a lot of the internal duties that most numeraries are burdened with e.g. being on local councils, hearing the chats of other members, giving talks of formation, running retreats and annual courses. However, she was in Opus Dei long enough that she would very likely have done some of these duties at various times, and undoubtedly knows what they involved, including the lack of confidentiality, making decisions about people’s lives and grooming of potential recruits. 

Laura was in Opus Dei for long enough that she would have known and probably still knows many many members and ex-members with the following features:

1. major, long-term psychological symptoms, such as depression, psychosis, breakdowns, addictions
2. celibate members referred to the 4th floor of the Clinic Universitaria in the Opus Dei University of Navarre to be medicated for their psychiatric symptoms by Opus Dei clinicians, and so kept away from mainstream psychology - further details https://www.reddit.com/r/opusdeiexposed/comments/1t5i7oy/next_up_spotlight_on_opus_deis_extensive_drugging/ 
3. burnt out teachers in Opus Dei schools 
4. physical health problems from overwork, in the case of domestic servant members
5. well-documented deceptive recruitment and trafficking of minors as domestic servants worldwide
6. old, sad numeraries and priests who have few friends or family ties after decades of internal work, and who are kept away from the public eye
7. traumatised ex-members, who have struggled to adapt to normal life
8. estranged members of Opus Dei families who never joined and who are allergic to Opus Dei because of its controlling and interfering ways
9. people whose life decisions such as careers and residence were taken for them and who have lost a lot of happiness as a result
10. women married members pressured to have very large families
11. colleagues and supposed friends who she talked about in spiritual direction and put on the “St Joseph’s list” of potential recruits every 19 March, and who are wary of her because they worked out that her friendship is not genuine

As a doctor, Laura has a higher duty than most to be ethical and for me, this should include acknowledging the very many health issues that she witnessed during her time in Opus Dei. For this reason alone, the exposure of her in this article is important. 

Laura and people like her who want to acknowledge the positives from their time in Opus Dei are entitled to do so. But if they can’t combine this with acknowledging the problems that they witnessed, then they are not ready to go public at all.

If she sees this, I challenge her either to publicly withdraw her consent for the video to be shown by Opus Dei or to agree to an unscripted, improvised interview on the problems in Opus Dei and her experience of them. 

Recently, the Opus Dei Misinformation Dungeons have been working hard on series of 49 face-to-face interviews with individuals about Opus Dei - mostly members and non-members. However, there are also 2 ex-numerary members (celibates living in centres of Opus Dei), a doctor called Laura from Barcelona and an NGO manager called Pedro from Argentina. See

https://opusdei.org/en-uk/article/one-by-one-numerary-argentina-discernment-vocation-dating/
https://opusdei.org/en-uk/article/one-by-one-testimony-numerary-barcelona-discernment-virtues-formation/

Most of the 49 interviewees are from Spain, Argentina and Brazil. The only two English-speaking interviews were with people from Canada and Australia. Notably for me, there was no one from the UK, the USA or Ireland, where efforts to counter deceptive Opus Dei narratives in the English-speaking world are perhaps more concentrated.

It seems to me that the 2 interviews with the ex-numeraries were aimed at showing that the vast majority of ex-members are on good terms with the Prelature and are broadly happy with their Opus Dei experience.

Nothing in these interviews is left to chance. There is no interviewer or dialogue. Everything will have been discussed, scripted, edited, re-recorded until the end-product conformed exactly to the pre-set narratives of the Prelature i.e. to make Opus Dei look as good as possible, while retaining its improvised nature and ignoring specific criticisms.

What are these narratives?

1. There was a process of genuine discernment of "vocation" to Opus Dei before joining, with no pressure.
2. The person grew spiritually in their time in Opus Dei.
3. It was easy to leave Opus Dei. It was a personal decision. There was no pressure to stay.
4. The Prelature was willing to listen to criticisms from the departing member.
5. Those criticisms were minor.
6. Opus Dei helped them in their lives, and to make a positive contribution to society during that time and after they left.
7. They remain on good terms with current members of Opus Dei, have no bad feeling, and may even continue to attend Opus Dei spiritual activities.

These two ex-numeraries are sellouts because they know that they are misleading viewers by omission, careful phrasing that conceals the true coercive nature of Opus Dei and by allowing Opus Dei leaders to dictate the terms of the interview i.e. nothing negative about Opus Dei. I will go into detail about the deception in these videos in future articles. Thank you for reading.

Josemaria Escriva wrote in "The Way":
"Intransigence is not just simply intransigence: it is 'holy intransigence.' Don't forget that there also exists a 'holy coercion.'

• Text from point 398 of chapter Your holiness of Josemaría Escrivá's book The Way. Link: https://escriva.org/en/camino/398/

This book received the Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat from the Vatican, which means that it is declared free of Catholic doctrinal error.

How can the Vatican have approved a book that contains an assertion that coercion can be "holy"? Well, there is no further explanation from Escriva in the chapter so perhaps the Vatican thought it was capable of differing interpretations.

Escriva started to compile his musings into what later became "The Way" in 1934, the same year that he wrote his internal document, "Instruction on the Way to do Proselytism" i.e. his "indications" to members of Opus Dei on how to recruit people to Opus Dei.

This internal document does not have any approval by the Vatican. Examples of "holy coercion" are seen in the following paragraphs:

80. "...your spiritual director must always be a priest of Opus Dei"

(This rule breached canon 530 of the 1917 Code of Canon law, now in canon 630 of the 1983 Code.)

81. "With holy mischief, bring to our priests the souls whose vocation concerns you. If you cannot or it is not discreet to take them under your direction from the beginning, put them in contact with our priests for a professional matter, presenting them as advisors in Law, Morality, Philosophy, History, Literature, etc. This point is of great importance."

This guideline is manifestly evil.

I don't know when the Vatican first received the internal documents of Opus Dei but they have definitely had them for a few years, since being provided publicly by a former member who filed them all along with an official canon law complaint.

For the Vatican to tolerate this nonsense is further nonsense. It brings shame on the Catholic church that a nutter can promote "coercion" as holy.

This is one of many reasons why the Catholic church is dying. Every time the Vatican makes a decision to ignore an outrage that the average person immediately knows is immoral, or puts it in the in-tray for consideration one day who knows when, it dies a little more, and deservedly so.

Our world needs truth, validation of the truth, and courage to validate the truth. When one has this courage, it is not hard. This is what good people do all day long - instinctively react to something that doesn't feel moral. It doesn't need years of study and consultation for popes to do likewise. Popes have imperial power over their church.

In a recent interview with a Spanish news outlet, Gareth Gore relayed that he had told Pope Leo about the 4th floor of the "Clinica Universitaria" in Pamplona, Spain, where traumatised members of Opus Dei are sent by Opus Dei for psychiatric treatment that does "not question their vocation to Opus Dei." I was one such victim. Apparently the pope did not know before about this clinic department and gasped.

Here is the article https://cadenaser.com/nacional/2026/05/04/gareth-gore-autor-de-opus-el-papa-me-prometio-que-examinaria-todas-las-pruebas-sobre-los-abusos-en-un-hospital-del-norte-de-espana-cadena-ser/#

From it: "Those victims who are sent to Opus Dei doctors [in this clinic] are prescribed a cocktail of medicines to hide their symptoms without really addressing the causes of their mental infirmity. There have been many cases of suicide and people who could not overcome their issues and did not receive help from the organisation."

This is what happened to me in 2003/04, following discussion by the Regional Commission of the UK including Jack Valero, also the Opus Dei press officer for NW Europe.

I was flown to Pamplona and privately prescribed libido suppressants for my p*rn addiction after a 30 minute consultation, in which Andrew Curtis was present. Mr Curtis was my spiritual director at the time and a member of the Regional Commission of the UK at the time. He still is. He also is the safeguarding coordinator for the Prelature of Opus Dei in Britain.

I have written often here about the 1980 investigation by Catholic clergy and "The Times" of London, which found Opus Dei psychologically abusive.

One of Mr Valero's main role as press officer for the past several decades has been to conceal bad news from the bishops and the general public. Over the same time, he has seen to it that people like me were kept away from NHS psychological treatment, so that we would stay in Opus Dei as long as possible.

Jack Valero would rather see numeraries and other members of Opus Dei die than treated by professional doctors, with the risk that they might leave Opus Dei.