Catholic group Opus Dei accused of recruiting children
The former members — most of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation — said children were “groomed” through youth clubs, schools and community programmes linked to the organisation around the world, including in the US and Europe.
More than a dozen former members said minors were also encouraged to adopt practices such as corporal mortification, in which members wear a spiked metal chain called a “cilice” around the thigh or use a rope whip called a “discipline” on their body.
“Shortly after writing the letter, the director [of the centre] gives them to the boys. In other words, some kids start using them before they turn 15,” the former deputy director of the Colombian boys’ club said.
Former members said children were particularly targeted as potential celibate recruits.
“It’s a grooming process that starts as early as 14,” said one former celibate member from Spain who requested to join Opus Dei in the early 2000s, when she was 14, and left nine years ago. “To suggest celibacy to a 14-year-old, how is that suitable?”
The organisation stated: “Seeking to acquire a deep faith from a very young age is not new. The Catholic Church has canonised people who discovered and followed their vocation from a very early age, such as St Thérèse of Lisieux”, a 19th-century Carmelite nun.
In 2021, 43 women in Latin America accused Opus Dei in a written complaint to the Vatican of trafficking and exploitation, claims that are being investigated by Argentine authorities. The women were “assistant numeraries”, a female-only category of members who dedicate themselves to domestic work at Opus Dei centres.
Earlier this year an FT investigation uncovered similar allegations in Europe, the US and Africa. Sixteen women said they were coerced as young girls from low-income backgrounds into decades of unpaid domestic service.
“They said the intention was to give them an education, to empower them, but the reality that I saw was the opposite. They were getting free labour to work in their centres,” she said. She left Opus Dei in 2021 after her attempts to reform the school were ignored.
https://www.ft.com/content/4e9aa330-44c3...990b80458b
The former members — most of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation — said children were “groomed” through youth clubs, schools and community programmes linked to the organisation around the world, including in the US and Europe.
More than a dozen former members said minors were also encouraged to adopt practices such as corporal mortification, in which members wear a spiked metal chain called a “cilice” around the thigh or use a rope whip called a “discipline” on their body.
“Shortly after writing the letter, the director [of the centre] gives them to the boys. In other words, some kids start using them before they turn 15,” the former deputy director of the Colombian boys’ club said.
Former members said children were particularly targeted as potential celibate recruits.
“It’s a grooming process that starts as early as 14,” said one former celibate member from Spain who requested to join Opus Dei in the early 2000s, when she was 14, and left nine years ago. “To suggest celibacy to a 14-year-old, how is that suitable?”
The organisation stated: “Seeking to acquire a deep faith from a very young age is not new. The Catholic Church has canonised people who discovered and followed their vocation from a very early age, such as St Thérèse of Lisieux”, a 19th-century Carmelite nun.
In 2021, 43 women in Latin America accused Opus Dei in a written complaint to the Vatican of trafficking and exploitation, claims that are being investigated by Argentine authorities. The women were “assistant numeraries”, a female-only category of members who dedicate themselves to domestic work at Opus Dei centres.
Earlier this year an FT investigation uncovered similar allegations in Europe, the US and Africa. Sixteen women said they were coerced as young girls from low-income backgrounds into decades of unpaid domestic service.
“They said the intention was to give them an education, to empower them, but the reality that I saw was the opposite. They were getting free labour to work in their centres,” she said. She left Opus Dei in 2021 after her attempts to reform the school were ignored.
https://www.ft.com/content/4e9aa330-44c3...990b80458b
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
