Like many Catholics who are familiar with their faith as it is actually lived, Opus Dei rarely resembles the institution so often presented in the secular press.
It does not fit easily into the narratives that are routinely imposed upon Catholic bodies.
Instead, the picture painted is frequently one of “cult” and “secrecy”, drawn less from Catholic reality than from popular fiction.
Much of this framing still owes more to The Da Vinci Code than to any serious engagement with the life of the Church.
With fiction, the imagination is given free rein and reality becomes distorted.
Over time, this produces a false picture, one we have seen repeatedly in media portrayals of Catholicism, which is often treated not as a concrete reality to be examined carefully, but as a symbolic canvas onto which wider anxieties and grievances are projected.
For Opus Dei, this makes it an easy target for the secular press.
It is poorly understood, sufficiently obscure to be cast as unsettling, organised enough to appear suspicious, and Catholic enough to provoke instinctive mistrust among readers already primed to expect wrongdoing.
This pattern is familiar whenever Catholic news gains traction. The secular press’s habit of exaggeration becomes particularly pronounced when a pontiff is introduced.
The Pope functions as a narrative amplifier. His name adds weight and drama regardless of whether he has any substantive involvement.
Stories that would otherwise attract limited attention are elevated simply by implying papal interest or encouragement, even when such suggestions rest on nothing more solid than an unnamed source or a second hand assertion.
It is within this context that the Guardian’s coverage of a small conference in Argentina concerning Opus Dei should be understood.
The Guardian’s report of 15 December on an international gathering in Argentina of former members of Opus Dei is revealing less for what it establishes than for what it attempts to suggest.
Stripped of its most eye catching element, the story concerns a conference in Buenos Aires organised around the testimonies of 43 women who allege they were exploited when they were young and who are now engaged in a legal dispute with Opus Dei and its regional leadership.
That dispute is already under way. Prosecutors are investigating, lawyers are involved, and public debate in Argentina has been ongoing for some time.
The Guardian’s version of the story, however, hinges on something else entirely: the claim that Pope Leo XIV “privately urged organisers to convene the conference”, accompanied by the further suggestion that he might make a statement afterwards.
This is the lever that transforms a geographically and institutionally distant event into a global drama.
As the Guardian itself acknowledges, the claim cannot be verified.
It rests entirely on an anonymous “source with knowledge of the case”.
As noted above, the Pope’s name is not a decorative flourish for the secular press. If Pope Leo truly “urged” the organisers of the conference, the story would no longer concern contested allegations alone, but direct papal involvement.
Yet we do not know that he did. No corroboration is offered. The Holy See does not confirm it, even in the Guardian’s own reporting.
More importantly, Pope Leo has made no statement.
The suggested post conference intervention has not materialised.
The extraordinary claim remains unsupported by evidence.
This is why the Guardian’s piece is of interest chiefly because it invokes Pope Leo at all.
The remainder concerns a small conference, far from both Rome and the UK, involving individuals who report negative experiences of Opus Dei and who are engaged in an ongoing legal dispute, now being framed in the language of trafficking.
Whether that characterisation stands up in court is a matter for evidence, due process and legal argument, not journalistic escalation through the use of the Pope’s name as a rhetorical device.
While researching this piece, I had the opportunity to review the email correspondence between Opus Dei and the Guardian.
Opus Dei, through its Information Office, wrote to the Guardian’s readers’ editor objecting to the use of unverified claims in the headline and opening paragraphs, and to the promotional deployment of an anonymous tip to bring the Pope into the frame.
In that message, Opus Dei stated: “We believe a serious newspaper such as The Guardian should not be promoting its articles based on unverified claims.”
It added that at least one headline level assertion had “been shown to be false”, referring to the suggestion that the Pope would comment afterwards.
The Guardian’s response did not supply evidence for the papal claim. Instead, it argued that the article had “contextualised” the reference and that readers would not be misled.
It said it had amended the subheading to “more closely reflect the reporting”, stressing that the claim came from a source and was not presented as established fact. It also insisted that it would be inappropriate to amend the archive “retrospectively with the benefit of hindsight”.
This goes to the heart of the problem. This is not a matter of hindsight, but of verification. If a claim is weighty enough to justify a headline, it is weighty enough to require substantiation.
To argue that an anonymous assertion has been sufficiently “contextualised” is to treat insinuation as a substitute for proof.
To resist correction in the name of archival integrity is to confuse preserving the record with preserving error.
The secular media frequently approaches the Church through a lens of hyperbole, covering Catholic life chiefly through controversy.
It gravitates towards stories that confirm prior suspicion, and when the Pope’s name serves a purpose, it is deployed as a moral accelerant.
None of this implies that allegations should be minimised or that complainants should be dismissed. It does, however, mean that the Church and the public deserve a higher standard of reporting.
In this case, the Guardian amplifies a claim about the Pope that it cannot verify and implicitly invites readers to treat as plausible.
We do not know whether Pope Leo knew about the conference at all. It is highly unlikely that he privately encouraged it, and still more unlikely that he would have committed himself to a public statement afterwards.
The plain fact is that he has not made one.
In a statement sent to the Guardian prior to publication, Opus Dei rejected the central claim promoted by the conference, stating: “Opus Dei categorically denies this accusation, and considers it to be a manipulated use of a criminal offence to obtain media exposure, when it has no connection with the facts described by the complainants themselves, let alone with the reality of Opus Dei.”