37 Facts About Opus Dei

Opus Dei, formally known as the Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei, is an institution of the Catholic Church whose members seek personal Christian holiness and strive to imbue their work and society with Christian principles.

Opus Dei is Latin for "Work of God"; hence the organization is often referred to by members and supporters as the Work.

Opus Dei was founded in Spain in 1928 by Catholic priest Josemaria Escriva and was given final Catholic Church approval in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.

John Paul II made it a personal prelature in 1982 by the apostolic constitution Ut sit; that is, the jurisdiction of the Opus Dei's head covers the persons in wherever they are, rather than geographical dioceses.

Opus Dei was founded by a Catholic priest, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, on 2 October 1928 in Madrid, Spain.

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Opus Dei gave the organization the name "Opus Dei", which in Latin means "Work of God", in order to underscore the belief that the organization was not his work, but was rather God's work.

Escriva himself recounted that it was in Spain where Opus Dei found "the greatest difficulties" because of "enemies of personal freedom, " and traditionalists who he felt misunderstood Opus Dei's ideas.

In 1947, a year after Escriva moved the organization's headquarters to Rome, Opus Dei received a decree of praise and approval from Pope Pius XII, making it an institute of "pontifical right", i e under the direct governance of the Pope.

In 1950, Pius XII granted definitive approval to Opus Dei, thereby allowing married people to join the organization, and secular clergy to be admitted to the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross.

Javier Echevarria Rodriguez, the second prelate of Opus Dei, died on 12 December 2016, and was succeeded by Fernando Ocariz.

Opus Dei was elected the new prelate of Opus Dei on 23 January 2017, and on the same day was appointed by Pope Francis as such.

Opus Dei is the first lay faithful, as well as the first woman, in Opus Dei to be beatified.

Opus Dei emphasizes uniting spiritual life with professional, social, and family life.

Similarly, Opus Dei stresses the importance of work and professional competence.

In Pope John Paul II's 1982 decree known as the Apostolic constitution Ut Sit, Opus Dei was established as a personal prelature, a new official structure of the Catholic Church, similar to a diocese in that it contains lay people and secular priests who are led by a bishop.

However, whereas a bishop normally has a territory or diocese, the prelate of Opus Dei is pastor to the members and priests of Opus Dei worldwide, no matter what diocese they are in.

The current prelate of Opus Dei is Fernando Ocariz Brana, who became the third prelate of Opus Dei on 23 January 2017.

The first prelate of Opus Dei was Alvaro del Portillo, who held the position from 1982 until his death in 1994.

Opus Dei's highest assembled bodies are the General Congresses, which are usually convened once every eight years.

Clergy of the Opus Dei Prelature are priests who are under the jurisdiction of the prelate of Opus Dei.

Cooperators of Opus Dei are non-members who collaborate in some way with Opus Dei—usually through praying, charitable contributions, or by providing some other assistance.

Leaders of Opus Dei describe the organization as a teaching entity whose main activity is to train Catholics to assume personal responsibility in sanctifying the secular world from within.

Leopoldo Eijo y Garay, the bishop of Madrid where Opus Dei was born, supported Opus Dei and defended it in the 1940s by saying that "this opus is truly Dei" .

We look with paternal satisfaction on all that Opus Dei has achieved and is achieving for the kingdom of God, the desire of doing good that guides it, the burning love for the Church and its visible head that distinguishes it, and the ardent zeal for souls that impels it along the arduous and difficult paths of the apostolate of presence and witness in every sector of contemporary life.

Opus Dei has been criticized for allegedly seeking independence and more influence within the Catholic Church.

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In recent years, Opus Dei has received international attention due to the novel The Da Vinci Code and its film version of 2006, both of which prominent Christians and non-believers criticized as misleading, inaccurate and anti-Catholic.

In contrast, these journalists continue, Opus Dei's lay members, like any normal Catholic professional, are ultimately responsible for their personal actions, and do not externally represent the organization which provides them religious education.

Also, there were notable members of Opus Dei who were vocal critics of the Franco Regime such as Rafael Calvo Serer and Antonio Fontan, who was the first President of the Senate in Spain, following the adoption of a democratic Constitution.

Similarly Alvaro del Portillo, the former prelate of Opus Dei, said that any statements that Escriva supported Hitler were "a patent falsehood, " that were part of "a slanderous campaign".

Opus Dei is not "elitist" in the sense in which people often invoke the term, meaning an exclusively white-collar phenomenon, concluded John Allen.

Opus Dei observed that among its members are barbers, bricklayers, mechanics and fruit sellers.

Critics of Opus Dei include Maria del Carmen Tapia, an ex-member who was a high-ranking officer of Opus Dei for many years, liberal Catholic theologians such as Fr.

Critics state that Opus Dei is "intensely secretive"—for example, members generally do not disclose their affiliation with Opus Dei in public.

Opus Dei has been accused of deceptive and aggressive recruitment practices, such as showering potential members with intense praise, and instructing numeraries to form friendships and attend social gatherings explicitly for recruiting purposes.

Critics allege that Opus Dei maintains an extremely high degree of control over its members—for instance, past rules required numeraries to submit their incoming and outgoing mail to their superiors for inspection, and members are forbidden to read certain books without permission from their superiors.

Sociologists Peter Berger and Samuel Huntington suggest that Opus Dei is involved in "a deliberate attempt to construct an alternative modernity, " one that engages modern culture while at the same time is resolutely loyal to Catholic traditions.

Opus Dei recommends greater consistency and transparency for Opus Dei, which she sees as having learned the lesson of greater openness when it faced the issues raised by The Da Vinci Code and other critics.