He spent
years investigating Opus Dei, a Catholic group accused of a vast conspiracy of
abuse. Then Pope Leo asked to meet
Sam
Wolfson
Gareth
Gore’s 2024 book Opus alleges decades of manipulation, which the group has
denied. He believes the pope wanted to send a clear message
Sam
Wolfson
Mon 6 Apr
2026 12.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/06/opus-dei-gareth-gore-pope-leo
Gareth
Gore was on a research trip to California earlier this year when he was told to
expect a call from the Vatican arranging a one-on-one audience with the pope.
Gore was
stunned. In 2024 he published the book Opus, a meticulously researched and
gripping account of the abuses allegedly perpetrated by Opus Dei, the highly
secretive Catholic group started by the Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá in the
1920s. Over a century Opus Dei established itself as a deeply religious order
that, they claim, helps ordinary people “love God and serve others through work
well done, carried out with honesty and integrity”.
Gore’s
book lays out claims the organisation is at the heart of a conspiracy involving
child grooming, human trafficking, and psychological and emotional control,
with former members saying the group used private confessions as leverage
against members and drugged those under its sway – claims Opus Dei
categorically denies. Gore reported that Opus Dei collaborated closely with the
bloody dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain, before supporting rightwing
causes around the world.
Gore laid
much of the blame for these alleged abuses with the wider Catholic church,
which relied on Opus Dei for financial support in the 1970s and in return gave
it freedom to operate as a legitimate branch of Catholicism, but outside the
Vatican’s normal structures. In 2002, Escrivá was made a saint after ferocious
lobbying by Opus Dei, despite much protest from within the Vatican, as abuse
allegations mounted and some Catholic leaders began to raise questions about
the organisation.
Gore
believes Opus Dei would never have been able to function without the complicity
of the Vatican – which made the invitation from Pope Leo all the more
surprising.
Gore
began reporting on Opus Dei almost by accident. He was a financial journalist
looking into the collapse of Banco Popular, one of Spain’s largest banks, in
2017. At the time, the world couldn’t understand how such a pillar of European
banking had failed so spectacularly. Gore discovered that the bank had been
hijacked by Opus Dei since the 1940s (the bank’s chair was a lifetime member,
as were much of its board, and companies controlled by Opus Dei turned out to
be the bank’s largest shareholders). Opus Dei had used the bank “as its
personal cash machine”, Gore alleged, “siphoning off” funds to finance its
expansion around the world. (The trial of Banco Popular’s former leadership,
facing allegations of fraud, is scheduled to begin in Spain’s national court in
2027. For its part, Opus Dei has denied that it was involved in the management
of the bank and said it “does not get involved in commercial activities”.)
Through
hundreds of interviews with former Opus Dei members, Gore’s book traces how
from the 1950s onwards, Banco Popular’s wealth went into creating a vast
recruitment network targeting children and vulnerable teenagers, building
palatial Opus Dei centres across the world, and eventually forming one of the
most formidable clandestine political influences in the US. Its US members
would become crucial in eroding reproductive rights, funding the Washington
march that led to January 6, and heavily influencing Project 2025, according to
Gore’s reporting.
Who knows
how much information actually gets to [the pope]. Opus Dei is renowned for
having penetrated the Vatican
Gareth
Gore
Gore’s
book also sheds light on the inner workings of Opus Dei. Its most religious
members, called numeraries, live in single-sex dormitories in a life of
servitude and self-flagellation: they fast for dangerously long periods, wear a
small spiked chain called a cilice around their thighs, and whip themselves
with ropes, former members told Gore. Every element of their life is strictly
controlled and manipulated by the group’s leader and senior priests, Gore said.
Mental illness, common in an atmosphere of constant physical and psychological
abuse, was treated with a reported cocktail of antidepressants, sedatives and
even Rohypnol, according to claims made by victims in interviews Gore
conducted.
Female
members known as “numerary assistants” – women and girls from mostly
underprivileged backgrounds – staffed the Opus Dei residencies, working long
days cooking and cleaning. Many of them were allegedly cut off from their
families, transported internationally and, in many cases, expected to give
their entire salaries to Opus Dei in an operation that Gore believes meets the
UN definition of human trafficking. Some made claims to Gore of sexual abuse.
In
Argentina, federal prosecutors are leading an investigation into senior leaders
of Opus Dei who they accuse of overseeing the exploitation and trafficking of
women and girls; Opus Dei in Argentina set up a “healing and resolution” office
to hear the women’s complaints. In 2024 it also said allegations that girls
were coerced into joining the organization on promises of education at its
schools were “false and misleading”. Opus Dei said it is committed to
safeguarding minors and vulnerable adults.
Most Opus
Dei members don’t live in these conditions. These “supernumeraries” can marry
and live in their own homes. The most critical mission of the numeraries is to
recruit supernumeraries to make large donations back to Opus Dei and influence
politics and society to further Opus Dei’s conservative goals. An Opus Dei
priest in Washington DC, who Opus Dei acknowledged has credible accusations of
sexual misconduct against him, oversaw the 2009 conversion of former speaker of
the house Newt Gingrich to Catholicism.
In a
statement to the Guardian, Opus Dei’s US communications director said: “There
are cultural spheres from which the reality of faith cannot be understood. In
this case, a financial journalist interprets the reality of the Church through
an economic and political lens. Unless the dimension of faith is taken into
account, one cannot understand the Church … at the same time, we firmly reject
the serious allegations contained in the book Opus. The book contains numerous
errors, distortions, and unfounded allegations.”
The
organization previously denied claims that it “exercise[s] control of its
members’ political and business dealings”. It has also denied that it is a
“secretive” organization.
I spoke
to Gore, who lives in London, two weeks after his 16 March visit to the Vatican
about what happened when he met Pope Leo.
This
interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You’ve
spent almost a decade compiling this dossier on Opus Dei that implicates the
Vatican. How on earth does it happen that you’re invited to present these
findings to the pope?
Honestly,
I don’t know. I was on a work trip in the states and I got a call from somebody
I know in Peru who’s quite close to the pope. And he had heard from the pope
himself, that the pope wanted to meet me and to hear more. I remember putting
the phone down and having to take a moment: is this for real?
I was
told to contact someone at the Vatican who would arrange the meeting. So I sent
this message, still thinking: no one’s going to reply to this. And almost
immediately I got a message from someone quite senior inside the Vatican who
was like, “Yeah, yeah, the Holy Father has told me absolutely that he wants to
meet you. Let me know what dates might work.”
It was
then a pretty stressful lead up to the meeting. Not because I was stressed
about meeting the pope, but because I felt this weight on me. Having conducted
this investigation over the course of five years, having spoken to literally
hundreds of former members of Opus Dei and having unearthed all of these secret
documents about the way that this group operates, I felt this weight to ensure
that he received all this information.
How much
do you think Pope Leo already knows about the organization?
Who knows
how much information actually gets to him. Opus Dei is renowned for having
penetrated the Vatican. It’s highly likely there are people there who are
limiting what information gets to the pope – perhaps for malicious reasons, but
also, as with any other kind of big company or big institution, sometimes it’s
better that the boss doesn’t know everything so that there can be some kind of
deniability.
I think
[the pope] quite clearly wanted to send a signal to Opus Dei that he’s taking
these allegations seriously
Gareth
Gore
In the
limited time you had to speak with Pope Leo directly, what was the central
story that you wanted to tell him?
I think
people on the outside don’t realize the founder of this movement, this Spanish
priest Josemaría Escrivá, told his members that the idea for Opus Dei had come
directly from God. He’d received this vision which he wrote down in meticulous
detail.
These
writings are the source of all of this control and manipulation and political
manoeuvring that’s ongoing today. And so without understanding the internal
documents, internal rules, and without understanding that the members truly
believe that these rules came directly from God, it’s impossible to understand
the mentality of how Opus Dei works. So I was trying to convey that message to
[the pope], while also trying to explain why reforming this group will be
unbelievably difficult, because the founder is revered as a saint, which he is.
He was made a saint by the Vatican in 2002.
So the
pope can’t just say, “You guys have got to stop doing this,” because the true
believers will continue believing that all of these practices and all of this
manipulation is what God wants of them.
How does
one hammer things home to the pope? Did you feel like you had the freedom to be
persuasive, or do you have to adopt a respectful tone?
I went
into the meeting with this kind of burden of wanting to really get this
information to him, but I had this attitude of not giving a damn. Maybe I want
to rephrase that: I was unafraid of offending him or of breaching etiquette. I
just thought: no one else has been given this opportunity and if they throw me
out after five minutes, I can live with that because I’ve tried to do what I
think is right.
But I had
no idea about how he would respond to me ambushing him with this huge pile of
papers, these internal documents and me giving him a very clear, full,
unvarnished account of what life in Opus Dei was really like. I didn’t know
whether he’d be pressing his button, getting his secretary to come in and show
me out.
How did
he respond?
Honestly,
the meeting could not have gone any better. He asked a number of very incisive
questions. It went on for much longer than was scheduled. There were two
cameramen there. And at the end of the meeting, the pope said to me that it had
been his decision to invite the cameras in and to make the meeting public. I
think he quite clearly wanted to send a signal to Opus Dei that he’s taking
these allegations seriously.
Opus Dei
is only 100 years old, and perhaps the reason it’s not treated like other
groups of the 20th century that have accused of cultlike behaviour is the seal
of religious authority that has been stamped on it by the Vatican. Does the
Vatican have real powers to rein in Opus Dei if it chose to?
The
Vatican helped to create this monster, not least Pope John Paul II because he
saw them as political allies in his conservative crusade. He saw them almost
like his personal green berets that he could send off to any part of the world
where there was some kind of progressive priest or bishop who was causing
trouble. He could send Opus Dei there to do his work or be his eyes and ears.
He gave them this special status that has never been granted before or since in
the history of the Catholic church.
What is
that status?
He made
them into this thing called the “personal prelature”, which basically meant
that they were answerable to no one but the pope. They could operate anywhere
they wanted to in the world and any abuse allegations against [Opus Dei]
couldn’t be handled in the normal way through the local bishop or archbishop.
Ordinary Catholics welcome this group into their homes, they allow their kids
to go to its schools, they attend its meetings because [it has] this stamp of
approval from the Vatican.
Pope
Francis, to his credit, started to take action [before his death in April
2025]. He issued a papal decree in 2022 where he basically ordered Opus Dei to
get its house in order. But there was no effort to speak with any former
members, no effort to speak with journalists such as myself who investigated
the group.
The point
I was trying to make to Pope Leo is that if you’re trying to solve a problem,
the first step is to understand exactly what the problem is. Which is why I
suggested to him that the next logical step would be to open a full independent
investigation into all allegations of abuse [by Opus Dei] – whether they are
spiritual, psychological, emotional, physical.
This is a
group that is by invitation only and they target the elites: politicians,
judges, business people, journalists, academics
Gareth
Gore
Prosecutors
are starting to look into the organization too.
Certainly
in Argentina, public prosecutors there have conducted a two-year investigation
into the allegations made by 43 or 44 women. And after the investigation, these
public prosecutors concluded that there were absolutely grounds to charge the
group with human trafficking and serious labour offences. But that’s just the
tip of the iceberg. Since the Argentina allegations have come out, we’ve had
more women coming forward in places like Ireland, Mexico, France, Spain.
Opus Dei
operates about 300 [private Catholic] schools around the world, including in
the UK and the US. Not far from my home in south London there are two Opus Dei
schools where kids my kids’ age go. The next big step is for governments and
for social services to really look into safeguarding practices at these schools
and to begin to ask questions about whether this group, which is accused of
very serious abuses and crimes, is fit to be looking after young kids and young
adults. I would argue that it absolutely is not.
One of
the things you’re pushing for is for the canonization of Escrivá to be undone?
Would that be terminal for Opus Dei?
Unfortunately
people are brainwashed into believing certain things, so whether removing the
sainthood of Escrivá would result in this group just dying out, I’m not sure.
But it would go a long way to removing this stamp of legitimacy and approval
from the Vatican. If all the Vatican does is make a few tweaks around the edges
but leaves this guy as a saint, that’s going to send very mixed messages. We
have [the founder’s] actual writings in black and white where these practices
are not only outlined but mandated and ordered of the membership, which is why
this is such an enormous headache for the pope.
People
might think that this is an obscure religious group that has little to do with
them. Opus Dei says it does not take political positions other than the stances
of the Catholic church. But you describe them as having pivotal influence when
it comes to the makeup of the supreme court and abortion.
The
founder of Opus Dei made it clear that he saw his followers as part of a
militia who were going to enter into battle against what he called the “enemies
of Christ”. So right from the beginning, this is a political group that uses
religion as almost a veneer to hide behind – controlling and manipulating the
membership to get them to do things that might benefit Opus Dei politically or
financially.
In places
like Washington, [Opus Dei has] made a real concerted effort to infiltrate the
corridors of power and has been immensely successful. I would argue that today,
Opus Dei within the Maga Republican movement is one of the pre-eminent forces.
There are several very high-ranking figures inside the White House and the
wider Maga ecosystem who are either full-on members of Opus Dei or big
supporters. People like Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation
[and the force behind Project 2025], is a regular at the Opus Dei centre in
central DC and gets his spiritual direction from them. You’ve got Leonard Leo,
who helped to orchestrate the conservative takeover of the supreme court and
sits on the board of the Opus Dei centre in central Washington. The list goes
on.
This is a
group that is by invitation only and they target the elites: politicians,
judges, business people, journalists, academics.
What’s
ironic is that you have the leader of the Catholic church speaking out against
war and against the way that immigrants are being treated. That shows this
co-option of the Christian identity by Opus Dei to be a complete fallacy; it’s
all for political expediency. It’s about these people’s own deeply
authoritarian and conservative views about how the world should be run.
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