OPUS DEI.

Opus Dei, the official name of which is the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, is a Roman Catholic organization founded in Madrid in 1928 by José María Escrivá de Balaguer (1902–1975), who was made St. Josémaría in 2002. Although its first priest members were ordained in the early 1940s, only in 1947 did the Holy See begin to grant pontifical approval. The organization lived in a legal limbo until 1950 when Pope Pius XII granted definitive approval to Opus Dei. In 1982 Pope John Paul II granted to Opus Dei the status of personal prelature. By the early 2000s, the organization had approximately eighty-five thousand members, some fifteen hundred of them priests, in sixty countries, mostly in Western Europe and the Americas. The headquarters are now located in Rome. One of the most significant aspects of Opus Dei is that both the laity—men and women—and priests may join. (There are three different levels of membership for men and four for women.) The organization closely reflects the founder's socially conservative and hierarchical concept of society, as exposed in his writings, the best known being Camino (1939; The Way, 2002), a collection of 999 sayings and brief reflections.

Both the origins and evolution of Opus Dei are closely linked to Escrivá's own life and strong personality. In the early 1930s, he started a little center that recruited university students in Madrid. The sociological profile of the members was middle class and politically conservative, a sector being very much alienated by the policies carried out by the democratic Second Republic (1931–1939). When, in July 1936, the civil war broke out, Escrivá went into hiding to avoid being killed. He managed to escape to the Francoist zone, where he offered his services to the rebel authorities. At the end of the conflict, he returned to Madrid because the new political circumstances proved very favorable to Opus Dei. The crucial factor that initially propelled the organization was the support it found among some prominent Francoist politicians, especially Luis Carrero Blanco, Franco's right-hand man from 1941 until he was assassinated by the ETA (a Basque terrorist organization) in 1973. The dictatorship pursued a policy of purging Republican civil servants, professionals, and professors, which left numerous vacancies in those fields and opened the doors to many members of Opus Dei to rapidly advance in their careers. The Spanish Council for Scientific Research, several professorships, and high offices of the state were soon staffed with people related to the organization. The focus on the recruitment and training of competent professionals would prove a great asset in the future.

The height of public and political prominence for Opus Dei came in 1957, when the dictatorship finally decided to abandon autarky, the disastrous economic and social policies carried out by the successive governments since the end of the war. The ministries in charge of the newly adopted policy of economic modernization and liberalization were members of Opus Dei. The new policies enjoyed a resounding success that paved the way for the "miracle" of the Spanish economic recovery during the 1960s and early 1970s. This led to a more visible public presence for Opus Dei, and accusations by other Francoist sectors, especially the Falange, of hidden agendas. The democratic opposition also denounced the close links between Opus Dei and the dictatorship. Opus Dei always denied that the professional activities of its experts or "technocrats" implied an official line adopted by the organization. The relationship between its leaders and those of the regime, however, was always fluid, and Escrivá himself accepted the title of Marquis of Peralta from the Francoist government. When democracy was restored in Spain in 1977, several ministers in the center and center-right governments that ruled from 1977 to 1982 and from 1996 to 2004 were members of Opus Dei.

The papacy of John Paul II, which began in 1978, opened a new period for Opus Dei after the not-always-fluid relationships with Pope John XXIII and, to a lesser degree, Pope Paul VI. Holding conservative moral ideas, the new pope believed that excesses and mistakes had been accepted in some sectors of the church after the Second Vatican Council, and he desired to correct some of these; in such endeavors, he found an excellent ally in Opus Dei. Its orthodox Catholicism and its material and human resources were put at the service of John Paul II's reorientation of the church. The reward came first in the granting of the long-sought personal prelature in 1982, which gave the organization complete independence from the local bishops, and later in 2002 with the unusually fast canonization of Escrivá, a move that was resented by many progressive Catholics and lay members in Spain for his links with the Francoist dictatorship.

See alsoCatholicism; Franco, Francisco; John Paul II; Spain; Spanish Civil War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coverdale, John F. Uncommon Faith: The Early Years of Opus Dei, 1928–1943. Rev. ed. Princeton, N.J., 2002.

Escrivá de Balaguer, José María. The Way. Princeton, N.J., 2002.

Ynfante, Jesús. El santo fundador del Opus Dei: Biografía completa de Josémaría Escrivá de Balaguer. Barcelona, 2002.

Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez