I want to transition,

Gareth, to the relevance of all of this to today's American politics. Here on the podcast, we've spent a lot of time covering Leonard Leo, who's behind the appointment of all six of the current conservative Catholic Supreme Court justices who are currently reshaping American life. Leo is also at the center of the corruption scandals involving the court and billionaire GOP donors. And as I read your book, I was struck by how similar the dark money network of nonprofits that Leonard Leo has established. It's so similar to how Opus Dei operates financially. But tell us more about Leonard Leo and then the Catholic Information Center.

Opus Dei operates an enormous network of non-profit companies, of foundations, and for-profit companies all around the world, which officially have nothing at all to do with the organization, but which have you know a completely symbiotic relationship with opus day numeries are placed in charge of these foundations and companies and whatever and you know these these these these entities operators kind of pass through for you know opus day money to to funnel on to whatever you, they don't say what they really are. They have really kind of anodyne sounding names like, you know, the Foundation for Academic Excellence or, you know, stuff like that. So it's really hard what's going on. So, yeah, I mean, that's the way that Opus Dei operates. And yeah, I mean, as you rightly point out, you know, the US over the past 15 years, thanks to the Citizens United ruling, has, you know, these kinds of similar kinds of foundations have really bloomed. Opus Dei operates about 100 nonprofits in the U.S. So it's part of this ecosystem. But the ecosystem is much, much bigger. And, you know, with the recent election, we've seen a number of these entities that are used to funnel money from dark sources, often from billionaires who don't want their name attached. Leonard Leo has very much been at the centre of this dark money world, of channelling money from billionaires to affect policy and to affect the shift that we've seen in the Supreme Court. So Leonard Leo sits on the board of the main Opus Dei Center in Central Washington. So, you know, this is a place called the Catholic Information Center, which is a bookshop and chapel that sits on Cade Street, right in the heart of, you know, the lobby industry in Central Washington.

It's just a humble bookshop and a chapel.

Yes, absolutely. It's nothing more than that. I mean, there's a plaque inside the lobby of the Catholic Information Center, a blue plaque, that boasts about how the CIC is the closest tabernacle to the White House, which for me tells you everything about what this place really is. It's all about proximity to power. And, you know, the board of the CIC reads like a who's who of the radical conservative elite. Past and current members include people like Bill Barr, the former Attorney General, Pat Cipollone, who was the White House Chief Counsel under Donald Trump. You've got people like Kevin Roberts, you know, who's the President of the Heritage Foundation. He's a regular at the CIC. He goes there and gets his spiritual direction from Opus Dei priests at the CIC. It's this kind of symbiosis of faith and politics. You know, Opus Dei uses faith as a facade, as a means of recruitment, but also as a means of collecting information and of influencing people within its orbit. So, you know, spiritual direction sessions are used to push members in the right direction so that they might um they might you know connect with the right people or start the right initiatives or push a certain policy in the right direction you know that that's what's going on at the cic It's this network of people who are unified by the faith on the one hand, but also unified by the reactionary political agenda. And it's a place where they meet and where they network. And they're also given, I guess, you know, the spiritual guidance that they get from the CIC and from Opus Dei in general as well is it's a kind of spiritual justification for the crusade that they're on. You know, much of the agenda that they're pushing forward is deeply at odds with the wider Catholic Church and deeply at odds with the way that many people outside of Opus Dei would understand Christianity. You know, it has nothing to do with love thy neighbour and all that kind of stuff. It's, you know, these are deeply reactionary, right wing agendas. And Opus Dei is the kind of patting these guys on the back saying, well done, guys, you're doing the work of God here. Yeah,

yeah, this is our mission on the planet. And really, you're talking about reactionary Catholic Christian nationalism having more and more of a foothold in Washington, D.C. And you bring up Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, one of the primary kind of authors or main figures associated with Project 2025. And now, thanks to the lamentable reality of our most recent election, Project 2025 is set to be put in motion. And at least to some extent, Opus Dei has influence over

that process. Is that right? Kevin Roberts is the kind of clearest link. So he's gone on record. I mean, he gave a speech about a year ago at the CIC where he talked about how he was inspired by José María Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. and where he quoted, Escrivá had this thing where he basically expected his followers to go out and re-Christianize the world and set fire to the world. And Kevin Roberts quoted this saying from Escrivá in his speech. Thanks to a number of very brave numeraries who smuggled out internal documents from Opus Dei that have been kept hidden for close to 100 years, but which recently have been smuggled out. These documents have been kept hidden from most of the membership, kept hidden from the Vatican even. But these are the foundational documents. These were written by Esrivar. So he quite clearly, he wrote that he saw his membership as being this kind of hidden militia that would infiltrate every part of society, infiltrate the worlds of politics, judiciary, journalism, business, education. And he wrote that he kind of basically expected them to use their positions there to, one, gather information about what he called the enemies of Christ. So again, Opus Dei being this information collecting network. But two, he committed quite clear that their role in those positions of influence as of Opus Dei was to use or abuse their positions to carry out what he called the orders of Christ, which of course would come through him. quite clear in these hidden foundational documents, these secret documents, that Opus Dei, the kind of fundamental driving mission of Opus Dei is to re-Christianize the world. It's a political movement that's interested in pushing this deeply reactionary and ultra-trad version of society.

It seems like Opus Dei and the people they have influence over are, they're in an incredible position to influence and enact the agenda that they want. And Project 2025 seems to be in line with that. What about J.D. Vance? I am aware that J.D. Vance is a fairly recently converted Catholic. Does he have a connection to Opus Dei? Kevin Roberts is good friends

with J.D. Vance, and he asked J.D. Vance to write the foreword to his book. And I guess because Project 2025 became so politically toxic during the election campaign and was very successfully used by Democrats, I think, to highlight the kinds of things that a Trump administration were trying to push through. Trump was very keen to distance himself from Project 2025. And I think having JD Vance openly writing the foreword to a book published by the architect of Project 2025 would have been politically inconvenient, let's say. And so the launch of the book was pushed back and it's out. It came out in a couple of weeks back, I think, or maybe actually, maybe it's come out, um, very recently. There's a certain ideological alignment between JD Vance and, um, Kevin Roberts and this wider Opus Dei network. And I think it's important that we do, it's important to see Opus Dei as that. I mean, this is what the founder of Opus Dei envisioned and what Opus Dei has been very successful in creating in Washington, DC is a network of like-minded reactionary individuals who are kind of unified by their faith, but it's not all about Catholicism. I mean, this is, you know, it's about creating this wider network. And Project 2025 is quite clear that, you know, what they want to do is fire thousands of federal workers because of this belief that these are all progressive, you know, radical progressives who have destroyed society and the rest of it, and replace them with people from this network that Opus Dei has helped to create. Now, there's no implication here that there's some guy, the head of Opus Dei, sat in Rome deciding who's going to be the next Secretary of Defense or whatever, right? That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that Obis Dei has very successfully infiltrated not just the conservative Catholic circles of Washington, D.C., but it goes much beyond that.

Gareth, congratulations on the book. It's fantastic. I encourage everyone to read it. What hope do you have in terms of the impact of the book? Already

since the book has been out, and it's been just a few weeks, I have received... a number of messages from not just former members of Opus Dei, but current members of Opus Dei, including priests who thanked me for writing the book and for exposing the deep problems at the heart of the organization. You know, problems like, you know, we touched on earlier the, you know, the enslavement of young girls, the targeting of children, the way that numery members are controlled and manipulated, abused, the prevalence of mental illness within the numery ranks and the use of prescription drugs to hide just how ill some of these people are. Opus Dei will be forced into reform. I mean, certainly the Pope has made it very clear that he is unhappy with the way that Opus Dei is being run and the way that it operates. And he's very much put them on notice. And we're currently in a strange kind of standoff situation. Opus Dei has been told to go away and rewrite its statutes. The Pope very clearly wants them to reform themselves. But I have doubts whether or not Opus Dei is going to be able to reform itself. I mean, certainly its reaction to my book. Any other institution presented with such egregious examples of abuse would immediately hold its hands up and say right okay we need to get to the bottom of this we need to you know we're going to commit ourselves to transparency here we're going to start up an independent investigation to get to the bottom of these of these accusations we're going to absolutely root out any abuse within but that's not been the reaction of opus day opus day has instead launched this huge disinformation campaign that's that's solely directed at seeking to discredit me and the book and so i think that the Vatican will be forced to act. The big question here is, is the Pope. And, you know, he's, he's an elderly man, he's knocking on 90 right now, he's not in the best of health. It's quite possible, you know, I very much hope he stays, you know, he lives for a very long time, but, but it's quite that he's not going to be with us for a huge amount more. And so the big question is, what comes next? You know, if the next Pope is from the more conservative wing of the church, there's a possibility that Opus De gets to live for another day and doesn't have to reform itself thank

you for listening to another episode of conspirituality we'll see you here next thursday or maybe on the weekend of course we're always over on patreon .