Pope’s recent meeting with Opus Dei backfires as his key interlocutor, Fr. Mariano Fazio, is investigated by Argentine prosecution service for trafficking and slavery of women. Fazio is former rector of Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Quote:The Argentine justice system accuses the auxiliary vicar of Opus Dei of human trafficking and reduction to servitude
Reduction to servitude and human trafficking are the crimes for which the highest authorities of Opus Dei in Argentina are accused. Those accused since last year are four priests and now another is added: it is about Mariano Fazio, who today is auxiliary vicar of the Prelature of the Holy Cross, that is, the second in global command of the conservative Catholic organization. The court case states that at least 43 women were recruited by Opus Dei when they were minors, with deception and promises, to be forced to work for free for decades as domestic workers.
If until now the case affected those who drove the Argentine delegation of the Work between 1991 and 2022, the new accusation by the prosecution reaches its current highest hierarchy, based in Rome. The priest Mariano Fazio (Buenos Aires, 1960) is the main collaborator of the Spanish Fernando Ocáriz, prelate of Opus Dei, and the first in the order of succession, according to the tradition of the religious congregation.
The accused in the case are former regional vicars of the institution in Argentina: Carlos Nannei (1991-2000), Patricio Olmos (2000-2010) and Víctor Urrestarazu (2014-2022), who are joined by Gabriel Dondo, former secretary in charge of the Women Section in the South American country.
The judicial investigation of the events began in 2022, after the public complaint made the previous year, and the indictment was formally filed in 2024. There it is maintained that 43 women in vulnerable situations were attracted to the Work, when they were between 12 and 16 years old, with the promise that they would have a home and could go to school. It was, prosecutors maintained, a plan that “consisted of presenting a false proposal related to the possibility of continuing and completing their primary and secondary studies, as well as receiving vocational training to obtain job opportunities, all in a context of religious education”. But the only instruction they received was to carry out domestic tasks —ironing, cooking and cleaning—, to satisfy the demands of the male members of Opus Dei, both in Argentina and in other destinations. “Without receiving a salary” and without their rights being respected.
Women had to abide, under threat of punishment, by a series of “lifestyle norms”: obligation of chastity, breaking family and social ties, in addition to periodic health check-ups that included the provision of psychiatric medication. They did not have access to the media.
https://elpais.com/argentina/2025-07-03/...umbre.html
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"
