Editorials & Other Articles

... On the morning of March 16, I presented myself to the Swiss Guards outside the main entrance to the Apostolic Palace – and showed them my invitation and passport. I had flown in from my home in London the previous evening. They ushered into the pontifical palace and into a wood-panelled elevator. After that I was taken through various ornate rooms to a first waiting area – and then to a second, where I was told to leave my phone. After a short while I was taken into the private library, where the Pope posed for pictures with me – and congratulated me on my book, which he called a “rigorous piece of work”. We then sat down and began our conversation.

Anyone who has read my Substack before will know how critical I have been about the way that the Catholic Church has handled – or more accurately mishandled – decades of abuse allegations made against Opus Dei. The group has been accused of long list of misdeeds: of grooming children, of trafficking and enslaving young girls, and drugging members to hide the mental health epidemic within its ranks. It is also accused of breaking the seal of the confessional and using “spiritual guidance” sessions to collect information about its members so that it can manipulate them into serving its own interests. There are literally hundreds of testimonies from victims online, on websites such as OpusLibros.org and Reddit.

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I’m not going to go into detail about what the Pope told me, or what questions he asked – I will leave it to the Vatican to decide what it wants to say about the meeting. But I’m very happy to talk about what I said in the meeting and what information I provided to him. I believe such transparency is important: not only does it offer hope to Opus Dei’s many victims that these allegations are now being heard – but, perhaps even more importantly, it creates a public record of what the Pope and wider Vatican are now aware of. By putting on record what information I shared with the Pope in the meeting, nobody can now turn around and say: well, we didn’t know.

I spoke at length about what former members had told me about the way that Opus Dei operates: about how the group abuses the legitimacy conferred upon it by the Catholic Church to lure unsuspecting victims into its clutches. I detailed allegations about how the group actively targets young children, how it grooms and manipulates them into a lifelong commitment to serving its interests from the tender age of ten or eleven – without their parents ever being consulted. I shared testimonies and documents backing this up and offered to connect the Vatican with people who were involved in such grooming who will testify to these allegations.