Papal vendetta against Opus Dei challenges Vatican II and lay involvement. Pope loves Synodal claims for the laity on his conditions alone.

The crackdown on Opus Dei is bad for the Church

The Motu proprio downgrading personal prelatures is only the latest step in a battle against the movement founded by St. Josemaría Escrivà de Balaguer, in which the Pope contradicts himself by going against the Council and the principle of synodality. The case of Torreciudad.

"What does the Pope have against Opus Dei?" recently headlined Crisis Magazine, an influential American Catholic magazine. A question that many have been asking after yet another mortification inflicted on the movement founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer in 1928: last August 8 with a new Motu Proprio Pope Francis in fact amended canons 295 and 296 of Canon Law to "downgrade" personal prelatures by assimilating them "to public clerical associations of pontifical right with the faculty of incardinating clerics." And since the only existing personal prelature is Opus Dei, the Pontiff's objective is clear.

Until that time, personal prelatures were instead assimilated to be like dioceses, according to what the Second Vatican Council established in the decree Presbyterorum Ordinis in Para. 10.

It was said that this is yet another mortification under this pontificate. In fact, Pope Francis' personal battle against Opus Dei began already in 2017 when he did not want the episcopal ordination of the new prelate, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, a strong signal of discontinuity with previous pontificates. Indeed, let us recall that it was St. John Paul II who had elevated Opus Dei to a personal prelature in 1982 with the Apostolic Constitution Ut Sit, at the conclusion of the painstaking work of a joint commission of canonists that had studied the best way to ensure the development of the charism of Opus Dei in the service of the Church. And it was St. John Paul II himself who had ordained Opus Dei's first prelate, Monsignor Alvaro del Portillo, a Bishop in January 1991, and then again in 1995 he also ordained his successor, Monsignor Javier Echevarría Rodriguez, who died in December 2016.

Monsignor Ocáriz's lack of episcopal appointment was a prelude to other changes; it took some time but they arrived punctually with the March 2022 reform of the Roman Curia (Apostolic Constitution Predicate evangelium) followed in July by the Motu proprio Ad charisma tuendum adjusting its provisions: jurisdiction over personal prelatures shifted from the Congregation for Bishops to the Congregation for Clergy, and the Opus Dei prelate cannot become a bishop (a curiosity this, because he is the only priest who by decree cannot be appointed Bishop).

That seemed to be the end of it, because at this point Opus Dei put its hand to the Statutes again to adapt them to the new provisions. Almost a year of work and just between June and July the revision was delivered to the Holy See, unaware that in the meantime, however, Pope Francis was preparing a new surprise that will now force the experts of the Work to revise the Statutes once again.

Despite this, the official reaction - in keeping with the spirituality of the movement - is one of total collaboration: "We welcome with sincere filial obedience the Holy Father's dispositions," Monsignor Ocáriz wrote to the approximately 90,000 members of the Work, "and I ask you to remain, even in this, all very united. Let us follow the same spirit with which Saint Josemaría and his successors accepted any decision of the Pope on Opus Dei. Since the Work is a reality of God and the Church, the Holy Spirit guides us at all times."

If this is the spirit in which the members of Opus Dei live these circumstances, the fact remains that the Pope's decisions have aroused perplexity and opposition, as evidenced by the intervention of canonist Geraldina Boni: in an article published on the Livatino Study Center website, Boni challenges the latest August 8 decision because assimilating personal prelatures to clerical associations goes against the will of the Council Fathers and puts the "authentic charism" at risk.

These are not theoretical arguments, but a concrete restriction of the autonomy of the movement and the possibility of carrying out its mission. An emblematic case is that of the Marian shrine in Torreciudad, Spain: built in the 1960s at the behest of St. Josemaría, it has become a destination for hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, who have always found priests from the Work to welcome them. But now the local bishop has effectively expropriated Opus Dei from the shrine, taking over its administration; and as of next September 1, a priest appointed by the bishop will be in charge of it.

In any case, the issue of preserving the charism of Opus Dei is also the concern of Professor Luis Felipe Navarro, Rector of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, who reminds us how at the origin of Opus Dei is the "universal call to holiness, sanctifying temporal realities, through work and family." "The charism of Opus Dei is secular," Professor Navarro points out, "the vast majority of members are lay people, almost all of them married. And an important point stressed by St. Josemaría is that all members are equal, there are no A and B members, lay people have the same importance as priests." So how is this reconciled with assimilation to clerical associations? "This will be the work to be done in the revision of the Statutes, to make possible the preservation of the authentic charism in the new circumstances," says Navarro again, who is nonetheless confident about the outcome.

The task, however, is not easy because the feeling is that the fundamental goal of the Holy See is - charism or no charism - to put Opus Dei under tight control, a tendency that is also seen with other ecclesial movements. But the movement founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer does indeed enjoy special attention: both because it is the only one to have been erected as a personal prelature and because it has to contend with a kind of "black legend" against it, which moreover served as the inspiration for Dan Brown's "fantasies."

And he certainly has many enemies in the Vatican and, especially, in the Pope's inner circle. So much so that to strike at Opus Dei Pope Francis contradicted himself on at least two principles at the heart of his pontificate. First, the implementation of the Council: as we have recalled the institution of the personal prelature and its assimilation to the dioceses had been a conciliar intuition, which did not exist before. The motu proprio of August 8 completely reverses what the council fathers desired with the personal prelature, that is, a more effective instrument in the pastoral perspective of mission throughout the world.

Moreover, the way these steps have matured is a denial of synodality, which will be the theme of the synod in just over a month's time. In fact, if the erection as a personal prelature saw a long dialogue and joint work between experts from the Work and the Holy See, Pope Francis' decisions were taken by force, certainly matured in a small circle of advisors who felt no need for dialogue and a shared path with the top leadership of Opus Dei.

Source