True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 459: Opus D.E.I.
Aired: 2025-05-15
Duration: 01:42:08


=== Sounding Like Nico (01:49) ===

[00:00:05]  I sound like Nico.
[00:00:06]  Inter omnus Arbor uno nobulis.
[00:00:12]  I can't do a Gregorian chant.
[00:00:14]  Oh no la silva talem prover.
[00:00:19]  I do, I just sound like fucking Nico, dude.
[00:00:22]  I think saying you sound like Nico is a little bit.
[00:00:25]  I don't sound like me, but she sounded a little, you know, Nico sounded a little brace?
[00:00:32]  You know, she sounded Nico, if you listen to her sing, you're like, she's a little little braces.
[00:00:39]  It's a little like me.
[00:01:03]  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Truanon.
[00:01:07]  Hello.
[00:01:08]  Hello.
[00:01:09]  Liz.
[00:01:11]  Ave Brace.
[00:01:12]  Ave Brose.
[00:01:14]  And we are joined by Praduccier.
[00:01:18]  Young Term Scump.
[00:01:20]  Welcome to True Nonne.
[00:01:24]  Hello, everyone.
[00:01:25]  Hello.
[00:01:26]  How are you doing?
[00:01:27]  I'm fucking Catholic.
[00:01:28]  You are not Catholic.
[00:01:30]  We saw this coming.
[00:01:31]  We saw this coming.
[00:01:33]  The second I moved to New York, I'd become Catholic, the new most Catholic city in the world.
[00:01:37]  And I love it, Liz.
[00:01:40]  I love it.
[00:01:41]  New York or Catholicism?
[00:01:43]  Both of them so much.
[00:01:45]  I've been eating waifers all day, drinking the blood of Christ, and just hanging out in my cassock and whipping myself.

=== Brace's Biblical Recitation (12:11) ===

[00:01:55]  What is this spiritual journey you're on?
[00:01:57]  I'm just trying to find out what happened to Jesus, you know?
[00:02:00]  Specifically, or like, are you just examining all the options?
[00:02:04]  I'm trying to kind of get out of going to hell.
[00:02:07]  You're trying to solve the murder of Jesus.
[00:02:11]  Who did it, dude?
[00:02:12]  Well, because I think that everyone's so biased in the retailing.
[00:02:15]  First of all.
[00:02:16]  Well, I'm just like, because like, okay, so he does these miracles.
[00:02:25]  These guys, I mean, I'm not going to say what kind of guys were pissed off about it, but some guys weren't too happy with it.
[00:02:32]  And the Romans, Pontius Pilate is like, you're under arrest, but he's like, I don't really want to.
[00:02:38]  But that's like, he's saying he doesn't really want to do it.
[00:02:41]  But I'm like, well, that's what he says.
[00:02:43]  And, you know, that's kind of after the fact he says that.
[00:02:45]  So like, if I had arrested a guy and he turns out to be the son of God and I killed him, I would also be like, I didn't want to do it, dude.
[00:02:54]  I really didn't want to do this.
[00:02:56]  They made me do it.
[00:02:58]  People made me do it.
[00:03:00]  The people made me do it.
[00:03:01]  I don't want to do this.
[00:03:02]  He's just misguided.
[00:03:04]  Thinks he's important.
[00:03:05]  But to keep you monsters happy, I shall love him.
[00:03:11]  And so I'm like, how could we know that he's doing that?
[00:03:13]  Pontius Pelate is telling the truth.
[00:03:15]  Plus, he invented that crazy kind of exercise.
[00:03:18]  I feel like I really want to record the like Brace version of the Bible, which is just you from memory telling the people.
[00:03:28]  By all of the stories in the Bible.
[00:03:31]  I mean, it's they just, well, this is the thing.
[00:03:33]  It's a Rosho Man situation because they all kind of, a lot of them just say the same story.
[00:03:37]  But I mean, what I'm just saying is like, I think that maybe things in the Bible, I'm not going to say they didn't happen like they say they happen.
[00:03:44]  I think they did happen because everything happens and for a reason.
[00:03:48]  But I'm like, I don't know if I trust everybody's kind of take on what went down.
[00:03:55]  But you have somebody else to choose from.
[00:03:58]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:03:59]  You know what I mean?
[00:03:59]  And so like, I'm just, I just try to get to the bottom of that because I am worried also of going to hell.
[00:04:06]  That's kind of a separate issue because I found out what hell was a few years ago.
[00:04:10]  And that's, I don't like that.
[00:04:12]  Why are you in hell forever?
[00:04:14]  What do you mean?
[00:04:16]  Like, if you go to hell, because you get sent to purgatory, you can be there for only a little bit.
[00:04:21]  And then there's like another thing that's like a shelf where I think you can see hell from and they put you there for a little while.
[00:04:26]  That might be the same as purgatory.
[00:04:28]  And then there's a place where there's just babies.
[00:04:30]  This is like a Catholic limbo.
[00:04:32]  What the?
[00:04:34]  That's what they send you.
[00:04:37]  Me?
[00:04:38]  Are you calling me a baby?
[00:04:40]  Oh, yeah.
[00:04:42]  But I would be, I'm just, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what happened.
[00:04:47]  So that's, that's essentially.
[00:04:48]  It's the best-selling book ever is the Bible.
[00:04:51]  And so I'm trying to get, you know, it's like, it's like this people who's like, I've never seen, you know, fucking Titanic or whatever.
[00:04:58]  I'm trying to see, I'm trying to do that version with a book.
[00:05:01]  Have you seen Titanic?
[00:05:02]  Yeah, I have many times.
[00:05:03]  Okay.
[00:05:04]  No, you can cross that one off the list then.
[00:05:06]  Yeah.
[00:05:08]  We're talking about a Catholic organization, Catholic-ish organization, a Catholic organization today.
[00:05:14]  I don't know if I would call it a Christian organization, but it's definitely a Catholic organization.
[00:05:19]  Opus Day.
[00:05:20]  And Liz, we didn't really get into this in the actual episode because it felt inappropriate, but I mentioned it.
[00:05:28]  I read part of Jose Maria Escriva's book, and I've been sending you parts of it.
[00:05:35]  It is so fucking stupid.
[00:05:37]  It's yeah, every piece you send is like worse than the last, but also reminds me of whenever you mention like guy who reads Sun Tzu or like, I'm sorry, some of the Machiavelli stuff is a little bit like this, even though Machiavelli's on a different tier.
[00:05:54]  Yeah.
[00:05:56]  And frankly, that's the second book he wrote.
[00:05:58]  I tried to read that book earlier this year in the bath and I didn't go.
[00:06:00]  Oh, no, I can't.
[00:06:02]  Not the prince, the other one.
[00:06:04]  Whatever.
[00:06:04]  The Republic, I think.
[00:06:05]  I can't, I can't, I couldn't finish that one, but I'll get to it.
[00:06:08]  Check out one of one of my favorite.
[00:06:10]  This guy's a saint, by the way.
[00:06:13]  Get a load of this.
[00:06:14]  I'm like, oh, he must be really wise.
[00:06:16]  And I open the book.
[00:06:18]  The fifth, it's all just like Rupi Carr style poems or like little pieces of text.
[00:06:26]  It's not poems, but you know what I'm saying.
[00:06:28]  The fifth one is just get used to saying no.
[00:06:32]  I mean, I'm sorry.
[00:06:36]  That's like your wisdom.
[00:06:38]  Get used to saying no.
[00:06:40]  It's all shit like that.
[00:06:41]  It's Instagram.
[00:06:42]  Turn your back on the tempter when he whispers in your ears.
[00:06:45]  Why make life difficult for yourself?
[00:06:47]  Don't do that.
[00:06:48]  Listen to the tempter.
[00:06:50]  Listen to what he asks.
[00:06:51]  Why make things difficult?
[00:06:52]  Do it the easy way.
[00:06:53]  What is the other one?
[00:06:54]  Don't put off your work until tomorrow.
[00:06:56]  Dude, you can't have that be one of your fucking quotes.
[00:06:59]  I feel like that's like, yeah, that's everyone's quote.
[00:07:02]  Dude, that's what I'm saying.
[00:07:03]  It's like, this guy is, this is a fucking, this is like a, this is like ascribing to yourself being like, a lot's better than none, you know, or something's better than nothing.
[00:07:14]  It's like, you didn't, you weren't the guy that came up with that.
[00:07:18]  What is this other one?
[00:07:20]  You persist in being worldly, superficial, scatterbrained because you're a coward.
[00:07:24]  What is it but cowardice not to want to face yourself?
[00:07:28]  Okay.
[00:07:28]  Wow, get this guy into fucking heaven immediately.
[00:07:32]  God needs to hear that one.
[00:07:34]  He's going to, it's going to change everything for.
[00:07:36]  He's going to, he's going to work really hard.
[00:07:38]  It's crazy to me.
[00:07:39]  I want to talk about Jose Maria Escriva's miracle for a second.
[00:07:42]  And this is really, we get into this in the episode a little bit.
[00:07:47]  His miracle is that this guy who had these fucking, you know, if you work on x-rays too long, you get a little, you turn into a ghoul from the Fallout video game series and you like your skin kind of blisters, but it's not fatal, but it looks fucked up.
[00:08:02]  And it's kind of like a like a skin condition.
[00:08:05]  And this guy is like, I got this fucked up skin.
[00:08:07]  This doctor is like, I got this fucked up skin condition.
[00:08:10]  He finds out about Jose Maria Escriva and he prays to him.
[00:08:13]  And then like a week later, the skin condition goes away.
[00:08:16]  And that's a miracle.
[00:08:19]  I mean, I think the skin condition just went away.
[00:08:21]  I think this, well, it's supposed to be irreversible, but I'm like, come on.
[00:08:27]  Well, why are we talking about this?
[00:08:31]  Because you're going to start focusing on performing miracles.
[00:08:35]  Should I do it?
[00:08:36]  Do you think I could do a miracle?
[00:08:41]  No.
[00:08:43]  You don't think I could do one miracle?
[00:08:44]  You don't think I could do a miracle?
[00:08:46]  Dude, that's not even.
[00:08:47]  That's not.
[00:08:49]  Do you think that you could cure someone's skin condition?
[00:08:53]  I think I could cure someone's skin condition the same way that Jose Maria Escriver could cure someone's skin condition.
[00:08:59]  It's just kind of like by being there.
[00:09:01]  I think if every single one of our, check this out.
[00:09:03]  I think if every single one of our listeners prayed to me every time there was something and it went away and we submitted that to the Vatican, I think I could become, I think we could get one of those miracles like sanctified.
[00:09:19]  You don't think it would be rigged probably against me, you think?
[00:09:23]  Now I see where all of this is going.
[00:09:24]  This is a grander project to get sainted.
[00:09:28]  But that would do good for the show, I think, if I became a saint.
[00:09:33]  That's what happens after death.
[00:09:35]  That's like a new thing.
[00:09:36]  So we gotta, you know, don't even put that out there.
[00:09:40]  Oh, that's true.
[00:09:40]  But I'm just saying, I think I could do, I think I could do a minor miracle.
[00:09:46]  Why are we talking about this?
[00:09:48]  We are talking about this because we have Gareth Gore on the show today to talk about Opus Day, the abusive cult within the Catholic Church, inside outside Catholic Church.
[00:10:01]  Very bizarre organization.
[00:10:02]  He wrote a fantastic book on it that we barely scratched the surface on.
[00:10:07]  But it seems like great time to talk about this considering we've got a new pope.
[00:10:12]  Did you hear?
[00:10:12]  New Pope.
[00:10:14]  I can't believe it.
[00:10:15]  I'll believe it when I see it.
[00:10:16]  American Pope who was like at like a Cubs game.
[00:10:21]  How do you find a video of the new Pope at like a Cubs game?
[00:10:25]  Or it was like the World Series, maybe?
[00:10:27]  How do you find that?
[00:10:28]  That's official recognition technology.
[00:10:31]  It's crazy that he's a pope from Chicago and not our second Polish Pope.
[00:10:37]  But I was going to say he's Italian by proxy by being Chicago Catholic.
[00:10:43]  Yeah, that is.
[00:10:44]  Yeah, I guess that's a little true.
[00:10:45]  I think that they should.
[00:10:46]  I would watch it.
[00:10:47]  I watched an interview he was giving and I'm like, oh, he's speaking in Italian.
[00:10:51]  I'm like, that's weird.
[00:10:52]  That's weird.
[00:10:53]  I guess it makes, totally makes sense, but it's still, I'm like, oh.
[00:10:56]  We know so little.
[00:10:57]  That's why we've got Gareth here to explain it all to us.
[00:11:00]  So let's get to it.
[00:11:14]  Ladies and gentlemen, many of you have followed closely on my journey with religion over the past year.
[00:11:19]  Obviously, listeners of the show will know that finding out who Jesus Christ was, what he did, and then what they did to him has been big for me.
[00:11:28]  Still wrestling with a lot of the implications of all of that that happened and still learning about it.
[00:11:36]  I'm about halfway through what his life and excited to get to the end.
[00:11:41]  I feel like it's a bit spoiled because I know that there's a crucifixion.
[00:11:44]  I don't know exactly what went down with all that or what they say went down, what they say we did.
[00:11:50]  I don't know.
[00:11:50]  Jury's out on that.
[00:11:52]  Maybe the jury is not out, but my jury is still out on that.
[00:11:56]  But I decided a couple of months ago to become Catholic and not only to become Catholic, but to become one of the most Catholic guys ever.
[00:12:04]  So anyone who's seen me over the past couple of months, Liz can attest to this.
[00:12:07]  I have been whipping myself.
[00:12:09]  I've been wearing all kinds of ball gags and like, you know, sort of leather harnesses.
[00:12:14]  I've been walked to the studio like a dog several times over the past few weeks.
[00:12:19]  And, you know, obviously I've been involved with, you know, paying a lot of money to somebody who just sends me insults several times a day, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, financial domination.
[00:12:32]  And in order to get sort of more into that aspect of Catholicism, I joined a group called Opus Day.
[00:12:38]  And I have been getting really excited about this.
[00:12:41]  I've been telling everybody about this.
[00:12:42]  You know, I've been thinking of opening a school in my apartment.
[00:12:46]  And all of a sudden, Liz is like, I read this fucking book.
[00:12:49]  And I think maybe there's some of the stuff you get involved with.
[00:12:51]  It's a little too fucked up.
[00:12:53]  And in the practice or in the tradition of Catholicism, she decided to invite and involve a devil's advocate, a position which was actually abolished in 1983 by, it turns out, a panel upon which the prelate prolate, I'm assuming it's called prelate of Opus Day at the time was involved with, which I find very interesting, to have on the show to talk me out of it.
[00:13:19]  And so, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, Gareth Gore, the author of Opus, The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church, welcome to the show.
[00:13:31]  And don't you dare try to talk me out of it.
[00:13:34]  Hello.
[00:13:36]  Well, what's an introduction?
[00:13:38]  Thank you for having me on the show, Bryce.
[00:13:41]  Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.
[00:13:43]  How do I feel about that?
[00:13:45]  Thanks so much for coming.
[00:13:48]  We're so happy to have you here, given all the news that's been going on in the Catholic Church.
[00:13:55]  And like Bryce said, I mean, we're going to talk about Opus Day today and your book.
[00:14:01]  And, you know, we're going to go pretty in depth, you know, into them a little bit later.

=== Pope Francis' Reforms Hang In (07:31) ===

[00:14:07]  Opus Day, you know, founded in 1928 by a Spanish priest.
[00:14:11]  It's kind of like just, you know, as a kind of cursory pass at it, it's just kind of like a built-in kind of a parallel church, right?
[00:14:20]  Like a hierarchical, secretive, fanatically disciplined within the Catholic Church.
[00:14:27]  And it operates through, you know, a sprawling transnational network of schools, front groups, financial arms, quiet influence that far, you know, that reaches far beyond its size, I would say.
[00:14:43]  And, you know, Opus Day claims obedience to the Pope, but I would say for years it's been kind of hedging its bets, particularly with Francis.
[00:14:53]  You know, it aligned with and has, you know, actively cultivating right-wing, hard-right power, I would say, within the United States, kind of banking on the idea that Pope Francis, who threatened, you know, various reforms within the church, basically wouldn't last.
[00:15:12]  And in the book, you have a quote from Tim Bush, who is a figure that I think we're going to return to repeatedly because he's pretty prominent in the U.S.
[00:15:21]  And he said, I think he's tightening the noose.
[00:15:24]  I think, you know, he's talking about Pope Francis.
[00:15:26]  I think he's tightening the noose, but I don't think he's going to have enough time.
[00:15:32]  And he was, he's right.
[00:15:34]  He was right.
[00:15:35]  Pope Francis died a little less than a month ago.
[00:15:38]  We have a new pope now.
[00:15:40]  What?
[00:15:42]  We have a new pope now, Pope Leo, who is the first American Pope.
[00:15:47]  And we're going to talk about him, I think, later on in the episode.
[00:15:51]  But whatever reforms were in motion, which I think were targeting Opus Day's status inside the church, its access to money and influence, those now kind of hang in, there's a bunch of questions, you know, if that's still going to come to pass.
[00:16:07]  And so maybe we can start here, which is why was Francis such a threat to Opus Day?
[00:16:14]  And what exactly made him dangerous to them?
[00:16:16]  And why were they so determined to just wait it out?
[00:16:22]  Yeah, I mean, so those words from Tim Bush were really quite prescient because when Pope Francis passed away on Easter Monday, he had literally been on the cusp of signing into law this huge reform of Opus Day.
[00:16:40]  Pope Francis had his eyes opened to the abuses inside this organization, to the really to the horrors, I guess, inside of this supposedly devout group.
[00:16:54]  And he'd set himself on the path to force this organization to reform.
[00:17:02]  For a couple of years before he died, they'd been locked in this standoff.
[00:17:06]  And this, you know, when I spoke to Tim Bush for the book, Tim Bush is a lawyer, a very wealthy lawyer from California who made his money in real estate, who's a very prominent figure in the United States and who's used a lot of his money to really try to steer the Catholic Church in the direction, the very conservative direction that he wants.
[00:17:30]  So when I spoke to him for the book, Opus Day and Pope Francis were locked in this kind of standoff.
[00:17:36]  The Pope wanted them to clean up, to really kind of tackle the abuses that had been rampant within the organization for decades.
[00:17:48]  And Opus Day was resisting.
[00:17:50]  And they, as Tim Bosch, you know, said to me, you know, they were playing the long game.
[00:17:56]  They thought if we drag this out, the Pope's getting on.
[00:18:00]  He's not in the best of health.
[00:18:02]  There's a possibility that this problem, i.e. Pope Francis and his reforms, might just go away.
[00:18:09]  And guess what?
[00:18:10]  They did.
[00:18:12]  So, like I said, just before he died, he'd been on the cusp of signing these reforms into law.
[00:18:22]  The reforms were actually sitting in Opus Day headquarters.
[00:18:29]  They'd been told to hold a vote on these reforms and they were due to hold this vote like a week later.
[00:18:36]  So within hours of the Pope passing, Opus Day cancelled the vote.
[00:18:40]  Clear signal that, you know, that was close, but looks like we got away with it.
[00:18:49]  And yeah, we're now in this whole new kind of unknown world.
[00:18:55]  Well, we let's see what Pope Leo XIV does.
[00:19:01]  But yeah, I mean, that was a pretty ballsy move from Opus Day.
[00:19:05]  You know, the whole of the Vatican knew that Pope Francis had ordered them to reform, to clean up.
[00:19:12]  Everybody knew that, you know, an actual change in canon law was just around the corner, actual change in Elpiste statues were just around the corner.
[00:19:22]  And for them to cancel it within hours of his death, you know, was just a kind of up yours move, you know, signal to the Pope, the kind of final twist of the knife.
[00:19:33]  And to make matters worse, you know, when Pope Francis' body was lying in state in St. Peter's basilica in the days after his death, before the funeral took place, you know, you had members of the public, cardinals, you know, heads of state coming to pay their respects.
[00:19:57]  One quite conspicuous person who came to pay their respects was this Opus De Cardinal, who just a few years before had been disciplined by Francis.
[00:20:09]  There were all these allegations of abuse against him.
[00:20:12]  Opuste had basically kind of ignored the allegations for years, but the victim had taken these allegations up to the Pope and the Pope decided to act.
[00:20:21]  He ordered this cardinal to refrain from wearing his cardinal robes, these kind of, you know, the scarlet robes, and also ordered him to stop, you know, to refrain from making any public statements.
[00:20:36]  Days after the Pope died, he was pictured standing over the Pope's dead body, wearing his cardinal robes, making a clear public statement.
[00:20:45]  You know, that's taken in conjunction with this cancellation of the vote to push the reforms through.
[00:20:49]  I mean, it's a double kind of two fingers up to the Pope.
[00:20:55]  And I think really tells you quite a lot about the difficult relationship that Opus Day had with the Pope and also the conflict and the complete lack of respect that they had towards Francis.
[00:21:11]  Yeah, I mean, I think it's so crazy because Opus Day is such an opaque entity, right?
[00:21:17]  And it's sort of like for people who just hear the name or I don't know, I feel like most people come in, you know, if they're not Catholic or they don't, they have no kind of like interactions with the Catholic Church or any of that, then they probably know it from like Dan Brown's books or the movies, you know, or, or they get it confused with the Knights of Malta, right?

=== Shell Companies Unveiled (09:19) ===

[00:21:38]  Which they're like, oh, yeah, that's some like crazy medieval organization.
[00:21:43]  And they think it kind of like goes back, you know, millennia or something like that.
[00:21:46]  And it's just, you know, some sort of old order, but it's not.
[00:21:51]  And it's much weirder somehow than that.
[00:21:56]  And, you know, you didn't come into the story through Dan Brown.
[00:21:59]  Like you came into it as a financial journalist, which I think is kind of, you know, it's, it's, you know, what gives this book such a great entry point because you started reporting on, you know, the, the, the collapse of Banco Popular, which was one of Spain's largest banks, which I think, I mean, forgive me, but I think the assumption was like, oh, here's another sort of like post-financial crisis mismanagement of one of the European banks, got to go report on it.
[00:22:30]  And what you found was not the case there.
[00:22:34]  It was a bunch of shell companies, some obscure holding structures, all these sort of like, you know, the same names kind of popping up over and over and over in a kind of, you know, financial web of different fronts all over the world.
[00:22:50]  And then eventually this organization, Opus Day, right?
[00:22:54]  So how do we get from, you know, your point of entry of like in a Spanish bank, you know, a Spanish bank collapse to uncovering this sort of transnational parapolitical Catholic network?
[00:23:08]  I mean, everything you said there is absolutely accurate.
[00:23:12]  I mean, like, I, yes, when I came to the story, it was through the collapse of the Spanish bank, this, this, um, a bank that everyone in Spain knew there were thousands of branches across the country, you know, one on every high street.
[00:23:31]  And Yes, I mean, at this point in 2017, when Banco Popula collapsed, I'd been covering this kind of rolling crisis in Europe of banks kind of teetering on the brink and then suddenly collapsing.
[00:23:48]  And I probably came to this, you know, I certainly came to this story as this kind of jaded financial reporter of like, oh my goodness, another bank, like more NBS on the books, guys.
[00:24:03]  I just assumed they all owed Gaddafi money.
[00:24:07]  Oh, probably.
[00:24:08]  And like one of his sons was like, putting it out, I've come to collect and, you know, some shit like that.
[00:24:15]  But, you know, like, and, you know, I, like the rest of the kind of financial journalism world, came to this story, I guess, through that lens.
[00:24:24]  And initially, the stories I wrote about the collapse of the bank were very much kind of the same stories that I've been writing for, you know, a decade at that point.
[00:24:35]  Or, you know, the story of like, you know, the typical story of like a bunch of guys who take too many risks, allow things to get out of control.
[00:24:44]  They can't admit to the mistakes because it's kind of too embarrassing.
[00:24:46]  So they just try to cover things up for a little bit.
[00:24:49]  And then it all kind of explodes in this one huge moment.
[00:24:53]  That is sort of what happened to the Catholic Church, though.
[00:24:56]  Well, I mean, that's totally what happened to Banco Popula.
[00:25:01]  But there was something about the story that kind of just, I just couldn't let go of.
[00:25:05]  And so I kind of returned to London and carried on with kind of other stories.
[00:25:11]  And this kind of became a hobby.
[00:25:12]  It was kind of something I did in my evening.
[00:25:14]  I would just kind of dig a little bit more into the story.
[00:25:18]  And then I find myself back in Spain a couple of years later and I made contact with the former former chairman who had run the bank alongside his brother.
[00:25:30]  Now, his brother at this point was dead.
[00:25:34]  His brother had died in 2006, but they'd been at the bank together for like close to 50 years.
[00:25:39]  And these brothers were called, the older brother was called Luis Valz Taberner.
[00:25:45]  The younger one was Jaya Valz Taberner.
[00:25:47]  The older brother, the guy that had already passed at this stage, was, and this was public knowledge, he was a member of Opus Day, which was not that abnormal in Spain's business circles.
[00:26:00]  Maybe that's something we can get into a bit a little bit later on.
[00:26:05]  And there were all these rumors that the bank was tied to Opus Day, but no one had really kind of managed to piece things together.
[00:26:13]  So I kind of knew of that.
[00:26:15]  What I also knew was that in the months after the collapse of the bank, a bunch of shareholders, well, almost all the shareholders had kind of decided to mount a challenge.
[00:26:28]  They were like, how the hell can we just lose all of our money overnight?
[00:26:31]  shares literally went to zero everyone lost everything and so all of these legal cases were popping up and i thought that's kind of interesting but what i found curious was that the the biggest shareholder of all of all this group that called themselves the syndicate which let me stop you right there guys i mean come on ray have you read raymond chandler you don't want to be called a syndicate Yes,
[00:27:00]  I mean, it's, I mean, actually, I mean, there are so many elements to this whole story that are just kind of stranger than truth.
[00:27:08]  And this is, this is kind of one of them.
[00:27:09]  Like, why the hell would you call yourselves the most kind of suspicious name on earth?
[00:27:16]  Like, why would you do that?
[00:27:17]  But they did.
[00:27:19]  And so the main shareholder of the syndicate, for whatever reason, didn't seem to want to get its money back.
[00:27:27]  It just, it seemed intent on just disappearing from the scene quietly.
[00:27:31]  And that kind of seems very strange to me.
[00:27:33]  So I started digging into them.
[00:27:36]  And it turned out that this group was basically a bunch of shell companies that were almost, I mean, in the book I talk, I describe them almost like they're like Russian dolls.
[00:27:49]  Like you kind of unpack, there's another one inside, another one inside, another one inside.
[00:27:54]  But they had similar, they had all of these kind of curious similarities.
[00:27:58]  A lot of them were registered to the same address.
[00:28:01]  A lot of the kind of directors of these companies seemed to shuffle between, you know, from one company to another.
[00:28:08]  So there's clearly a connection here.
[00:28:10]  And a lot of them gave their money to kind of religious works around the world, which I later found out to be, you know, linked to Opus Day.
[00:28:19]  So when I made contact with this, the younger brother, the chairman, the former chairman, I should say, at this stage, I basically asked him like straight out.
[00:28:27]  I was like, what the hell is this thing, the syndicate?
[00:28:30]  Like, like, I literally was like, what the hell is this?
[00:28:34]  And he was, he basically told me that it was a front for Opus Day and had been for close to 50 years.
[00:28:43]  And that's what set me off down this crazy rabbit hole out of which I'm kind of yet to emerge.
[00:28:50]  I keep, I keep thinking I'm kind of done and I'm climbing out the rabbit hole.
[00:28:53]  And then some new kind of nuggets of information or some new kind of source reaches out to me and kind of drags me back in.
[00:28:59]  Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
[00:29:04]  But yeah, that set me off on this kind of, I hate to use the word journey, but it's such cliché birds.
[00:29:11]  Set me off on this journey that, you know, took me kind of five years, I guess, to piece this thing together.
[00:29:23]  And yeah, the book came out last year.
[00:29:27]  And yes, kind of sets out that journey and what I discovered.
[00:29:32]  Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I guess shell companies can only function one way, right?
[00:29:38]  Like, yeah, they're probably all going to be kind of the same address.
[00:29:41]  It's probably going to be like the same three lawyers who are sort of shuffling between the board of directors of all of them.
[00:29:47]  He thinks that there would be like somebody who's like a shell company guy that you go to who's got like 50 dudes he knows.
[00:29:54]  Like, I feel like a lot of these places just need more addresses and more guys to be on their boards because otherwise exactly.
[00:30:01]  Like, you need like a shell company concierge or something, because otherwise, it's like this happens in like every shell company thing happens like this.
[00:30:10]  Um, I think it sounds like if the if the podcast gig doesn't work out, maybe you could become the new financial advisor for um legal advisor for Opus Day.
[00:30:18]  I don't know.
[00:30:19]  We got these set up in Panama now that they we actually do.
[00:30:24]  I'll give you a little listeners a little behind the scenes here.
[00:30:26]  Every like like our LLC or what all that kind of stuff, we all name everything that we can possibly after to make it the most shell company sounding thing possible.
[00:30:36]  It's always a fun game, yeah.
[00:30:38]  It is very, we have many, many names that we uh we we have sort of written down over the years, but um but only used a you know 10 or 11.
[00:30:47]  Um, so I think it's it's important to note that this this bank collapsed in Spain because Spain is kind of where it all began for Opus Dane.

=== Vast Unknown, Familiar Vision (03:18) ===

[00:30:57]  Uh, and it, you know, Liz kind of mentioned this earlier, but I guess to me, I'm like, all these Catholic orders, although Opus Day does have a unique position within the church, um, but like all these like, you know, like the Jesuits and you know, the Franciscans and all these guys, I'm like, this, they all started doing this in like the 1200s where there was nothing to do but invent new ways of to be Catholic and live in a monastery.
[00:31:25]  But this is like a relatively new and very modern phenomenon, which I think does make sense when you, when one kind of examines a lot of their activities outside of the immediate act of worshiping God, which for them is some oftentimes very strange BDSM ritual, but is really has a lot to do with banking and making money.
[00:31:47]  And I think it makes sense that this came out of sort of 1920s, 1930s Catholicism of Spain, because sort of famously a sort of cursory study of the Spanish church in Spain in the earlier 20th century will show you that like it was a it was an institution that was basically for the vast majority of its parts aimed at propping up the current order of the day,
[00:32:15]  which was like one of vast, vast, vast inequality.
[00:32:19]  Uh, the founder of Opus DAY, Jose Maria Escriva, not his real name.
[00:32:24]  He changed his name to Jose Maria which, reading your book, I was like this is okay, I know what kind of guy this is, just from that detail alone.
[00:32:33]  Um, but you know, he sort of gets to start in the intensely corrupt uh, Spanish Catholic church of the early 20th century.
[00:32:41]  He's caught in Madrid as the war started.
[00:32:43]  He's sort of starting up Opus DAY, but you say he, or he says Rather, and you repeat the whole thing to him to actually actually came to him fully formed as a vision from god.
[00:32:53]  Well, that's pretty claimed um, so you sort of gotta claim that though right yeah, you have to.
[00:33:00]  It doesn't quite work, the same way, does it, if you say well, I kind of drank this up in my bedroom and uh, does anybody want to join?
[00:33:06]  Yeah like, I thought of a better way to be Catholic than, like you know, Saint Francis.
[00:33:11]  Yeah, I mean, but I mean you.
[00:33:13]  Here's another, you know, like a good point, though.
[00:33:15]  I mean the, and I think Liz was saying the same earlier as well.
[00:33:18]  You know, when you think Opus Day, and you know, coming into this, I knew very little about Opus Day.
[00:33:23]  I knew, like I knew, of the Dan Brown book, but I hadn't read it at that stage.
[00:33:29]  I did later read it as part of research, and inverted commas for for this book.
[00:33:35]  Uh, you know what um it's?
[00:33:40]  I mean that's what we mean.
[00:33:43]  Yeah, I mean I don't want to diss a fellow author.
[00:33:45]  I mean he's, and he's a hell of a lot more successful than I, I have been or probably will ever be so um, so who am I to say?
[00:33:54]  But I mean it's certainly a page turner.
[00:33:56]  I can see very much why it was such a success and yeah, I mean it's.
[00:34:01]  It kind of pulls you in and it's really quick to get through and you kind of want to know what happens.
[00:34:06]  But yeah, I mean, coming into this, I you know I knew very little about Opus Day and I kind of also kind of had this assumption that it's probably like centuries, Centuries old, right?

=== Mother's Burden (03:20) ===

[00:34:16]  Probably goes back to the Middle Ages or something.
[00:34:19]  But this is an organization that's less than 100 years old.
[00:34:21]  It's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's younger than, you know, the, motor car and, you know, so many other inventory, the electric light bulb.
[00:34:31]  And, you know, it's, it's a pretty modern thing.
[00:34:34]  Um, so yeah, so for what happened was, I mean, so Escriva had, um, had gone to the seminary, he'd been ordained as a priest.
[00:34:45]  And basically, he was, um, you know, he was a very young priest.
[00:34:49]  These were his first few years as a priest.
[00:34:52]  I think there's a bit of context is important here.
[00:34:54]  So he came from a pretty well-to-do family, which fell on hard times.
[00:34:59]  So his, his dad was a businessman, and the business went bankrupt.
[00:35:05]  And so that's so European.
[00:35:08]  Well, not my, not in my family.
[00:35:10]  I know, but like, but like, that's very Spanish and French to me.
[00:35:13]  It's like coming from like a well-to-do family that falls on hard times.
[00:35:16]  And like the mother kind of has to take, well, I won't get ahead of you.
[00:35:21]  So, so I mean, I think, so he's, you know, he's known this life of luxury.
[00:35:26]  They had all of these servants and cooks and whatever.
[00:35:30]  And then suddenly they kind of have to leave, you know, lead a more normal life.
[00:35:35]  The father dies.
[00:35:36]  He's the eldest son.
[00:35:37]  And so I think he's carrying this burden on his shoulders of like, you know, like, basically, I'm the one that has to raise the family back to their greatness.
[00:35:48]  And so he's scrambling around for this greatness, I guess.
[00:35:55]  Scrumbling around for ideas.
[00:35:56]  At one point, he considers just leaving the priesthood entirely to become a civil servant.
[00:36:03]  There's also this kind of other complication.
[00:36:05]  So apparently, when he was like two years old, he had some high fever.
[00:36:11]  The local doctor came in and kind of told his mother he might not make it through the night.
[00:36:16]  But he did.
[00:36:17]  I mean, medical science back in those days wasn't great.
[00:36:20]  You know, we're not too far away from bleaches and whatever.
[00:36:23]  Yes.
[00:36:25]  But the mother, you know, during that night of agony when she, when her son was suffering from this high fever and she was thinking he might pass away, she prayed to Mary and she said, Look, if you save my son, I promise I'll take him up to this shrine 20 miles away or whatever, and we'll kind of, you know, show my dedication.
[00:36:54]  And, you know, next day, kid was totally fine.
[00:36:58]  I mean, which is, I'm the father of I got three girls.
[00:37:02]  And, you know, that's not abnormal that, you know, one night, you know, they go to bed with a raging temperature.
[00:37:07]  The next day, they're fine.
[00:37:09]  Anyway.
[00:37:10]  That was the most high, my brother.
[00:37:12]  That was the most high.
[00:37:14]  He sent Mary down there and she fixed him.
[00:37:17]  So, you know, the mother keeps her promise.
[00:37:20]  They go up on the donkey and they go to the shrine.
[00:37:23]  Oh, they went on a donkey?
[00:37:25]  They went on the donkey, yes, absolutely.
[00:37:26]  Oh, I thought she was going to walk to the shrine.
[00:37:29]  You know, the donkey's more comfortable, I guess.
[00:37:32]  Then what the, okay, well, all right.
[00:37:34]  Well, all right.

=== Going Too Far? (16:13) ===

[00:37:36]  Well, I'm just saying.
[00:37:38]  So they, um, but she, she tell, like, from this moment on, she tells him that the Lord decided he wanted you for greater things.
[00:37:49]  That's why he kept you in this world.
[00:37:51]  It's nothing to do with maybe the virus having passed or, you know, the fever passing, whatever.
[00:37:55]  No, no.
[00:37:56]  You're destined for greater things.
[00:37:58]  So he's carrying this burden on his shoulders of being the provider for this family that had fallen from greatness.
[00:38:04]  And at the same time, his mother kind of telling him that he's chosen by God.
[00:38:09]  He goes away to, he goes away and retreats in Madrid.
[00:38:14]  And one day, after kind of the morning prayers and morning mass, he comes back to his room and he collects together his papers that he's been, he's been writing all of these kind of ideas over the years about, you know, I don't know, like, I guess, you know, kind of maxims on life and general kind of philosophy, whatever.
[00:38:34]  And he, that morning, he has this epiphany.
[00:38:39]  He later says it comes to him directly from God, but, you know, we've all, we've all had moments where suddenly all these things that you've been thinking about just suddenly come together.
[00:38:48]  And this was that moment for him.
[00:38:50]  And that's the moment, according to this story, when Opuste was born.
[00:38:55]  So he says that at that moment, he saw Opuste.
[00:39:01]  And at that point, it was fully formed.
[00:39:03]  He like basically this image, this idea was passed down to him directly from God and it was fully formed.
[00:39:11]  And everything he did from that moment was basically God's will.
[00:39:17]  He was just acting out this image that had been kind of, I guess, bestowed on upon him and shown to him.
[00:39:26]  Well, it's interesting because, you know, you mentioned in the book, you know, it's like this image came to him fully formed, everything he was going to do.
[00:39:33]  And one of the things that came to him fully formed is no chicks.
[00:39:37]  And then like very shortly after, I guess God makes a post hoc edit and it's like, actually, we have to need, we need some chicks in here because you were doing a really bad job at recruiting so far.
[00:39:52]  I mean, this whole foundational story is, I mean, Escriva contradicts himself the entire time.
[00:39:59]  Like, so he says, on the one hand, when I got the image for, you know, when I was given this vision, it was fully formed.
[00:40:07]  But yeah, like you say, he then goes on to change so many things.
[00:40:13]  And all of those things, surprise, surprise, make it easier for him to recruit or make Opus Day more successful.
[00:40:21]  Well, my question is, and I've been really looking into this and I still can't quite figure it out.
[00:40:29]  Opus Day is supposed to be like, to be honest, I looked into a lot of the Catholic orders.
[00:40:34]  It seems like a lot of them has pretty kind of similar stated missions.
[00:40:37]  It's like bringing like the act of God into like everyday life, right?
[00:40:41]  Like it's normalizing God.
[00:40:44]  And from what I can gather, like, yeah, he's got his little book of maxims, which are genuinely, I'm sure I will read some in the introduction to this episode, but they are a lot of them are variations of like a true hustler moves in silence and like, you know, variations of things like that.
[00:41:05]  But one of the things that like stands out immediately is he's sort of, and this is maybe elder, elder child syndrome.
[00:41:12]  He is into this corporal self-mortification, which I think, and I saw, I saw the motherfucking, the Dan Brown movie a long time ago.
[00:41:19]  I don't remember a single thing about it.
[00:41:22]  I think I actually, in my memory of it, mix it up with the one with Nickless Cage where he finds the Constitution.
[00:41:30]  But National Treasure.
[00:41:32]  Yeah, I think National Treasure in my head, when I'm thinking of the Dan Brown thing, I think I'm genuinely just thinking of National Treasure.
[00:41:39]  But Jose Maria is a, he's beating himself all the time.
[00:41:44]  I mean, he is, he is, he is like whipping himself, which I think is crazy.
[00:41:50]  Like he's hiding out.
[00:41:51]  So basically, if you got, if you were like a right-wing dude in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War broke out, everyone hated embassies.
[00:41:58]  And which there was like 10, like, I think you say in the book 10,000.
[00:42:03]  I think over the course of the war, like tens of thousands of people just sort of hiding out of these embassies.
[00:42:09]  And at one point, like he's in a room with his boys and he's just like waiting for them to leave so he can whip himself, which I'm like, I don't know if God wants us to do that.
[00:42:17]  Maybe he knows better than I do.
[00:42:19]  But the practice of self-mortification is like there at the, at the very beginning.
[00:42:24]  And this isn't something that like a lot of normal Catholics are supposed to do or in fact, definitely not encouraged to do.
[00:42:31]  But, you know, they wear these, what are they called?
[00:42:33]  Silis?
[00:42:33]  I'd never actually, I just read the word.
[00:42:35]  I've never heard it.
[00:42:35]  But the thing that they like, the sort of angry garter belts that they wear that hurt them when they move.
[00:42:41]  Yeah.
[00:42:42]  I mean, there are two things.
[00:42:43]  There's the silas, which is kind of like this barbed wire that you put around your thigh.
[00:42:50]  I mean, you can actually put it around.
[00:42:51]  It's like a garter belt.
[00:42:52]  Yeah, it is.
[00:42:53]  It's like the crown of thorns for your thighs.
[00:42:56]  Well, I think that's quite an interesting way of looking at it, actually.
[00:43:01]  And I suspect the two are, because the whole point of these things is that, one, you're meant to suffer.
[00:43:09]  But two, it's supposed to kind of bring you closer to Christ through that suffering.
[00:43:13]  Like it's you can you one offer up the suffering to Christ, but at the same time, it's a reminder of the suffering that Christ went through on the cross whilst he was wearing the crown of thorns.
[00:43:27]  I think so.
[00:43:30]  It's probably kind of, we should say at this point that, you know, corporal mortification was not invented by Opus Day.
[00:43:36]  It's something that has been present in the Catholic Church for literally centuries.
[00:43:42]  But by the, even by the early 20th century, it had kind of fallen out of use and was heavily discouraged by the kind of the church more generally.
[00:43:52]  And in fact, you know, Escriva was, he mortified himself regularly.
[00:44:03]  And even his own priest, who was not part of Opus Day, he was outside the organization, even his own priest was disturbed by this and at times was really counseling him to kind of maybe take it down a notch because I think you're kind of going a bit too far.
[00:44:21]  Now, I think, I mean, it's a, you could write a whole book and, you know, I'm no, I'm no kind of psychologist or whatever, but, but, I mean, I find it quite interesting that, you know, he struggled a lot with his weight.
[00:44:35]  He wrote a lot.
[00:44:37]  He kind of chastised himself in his writing, called himself gluttonous, all this kind of stuff.
[00:44:42]  And, you know, the silas, at least in Opus Day these days, is normally worn around the thigh, but he would wear it around his waist, which again, kind of, I think perhaps was, you know, I think the guy had issues, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
[00:44:59]  Call that oposembic.
[00:45:02]  So there's the silas, but there's this other thing called the discipline, which is basically a whip.
[00:45:08]  Now, a whip, but so it's a whip made of rope, normally with knots at the end.
[00:45:14]  You take off your shirt and you're meant to whip yourself over your shoulder and, you know, onto your back.
[00:45:20]  Again, to kind of experience suffering and offer it up to Christ.
[00:45:26]  But Escriva, interestingly, was he liked to pimp up his discipline.
[00:45:32]  So he would add razor blades to the end of the rope so that when he whipped himself and when it kind of got, you know, when it kind of came into contact with the skin, it would literally cut into the skin.
[00:45:48]  And there are a couple of instances in the biographies of Escrivan, which I talk about in the book as well, where, you know, he asks people to turn away when he's doing this.
[00:46:01]  And, you know, some people, he tries to clean up after he's done it.
[00:46:05]  But even so, people come to the room where he's been doing this and they find blood kind of spattered around the room.
[00:46:13]  You know, he took this kind of medieval practice and kind of turned it up a notch and then made it obligatory for all of his members to do the very same.
[00:46:27]  Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I think if people have heard of Opus Day, that is kind of the one thing that maybe they've heard of, either from the movie or the book or whatever, or just from, I mean, just kind of like out in the ether that this is the, that there's, you know, how fraz you put it, BDSM, Catholic BDSM practice, because this is kind of like a central part of Opus Day practice.
[00:46:54]  I don't know if that's what you would say, but like this has, this became a foundational tenet of the group.
[00:47:02]  Yeah, and I think it's, it's another case of, I mean, let's not beat around the bush.
[00:47:09]  This is a, this group is a cult.
[00:47:11]  I think, you know, we can have a debate about what a cult is, but I think, you know, it basically ticks all the boxes.
[00:47:16]  And I would go further, it's, it's an abusive cult.
[00:47:18]  We can get, again, more into that a little bit later, if you like.
[00:47:22]  But this was one of those instances where a practice that the founder engaged in then became kind of gospel, for want of another word.
[00:47:33]  Everyone was expected to do it and no one was allowed to question why we're doing this.
[00:47:40]  And, you know, I think his, this imposition of everyone having to follow this practice of whipping themselves and wearing the silas around their legs.
[00:47:51]  So in Opus Day, the expectation is that you use the discipline of the whip once a week.
[00:47:58]  And the silas, the kind of barbed chain, you wear that around the thigh generally for two, three hours every single day in the afternoon.
[00:48:09]  But, you know, the idea that this was prescribed for everyone, I think, you know, kind of boils down to two things.
[00:48:16]  It's, it's, you know, one is it's Escriva's desire to control his members.
[00:48:23]  And also, I think, you know, there's a bit of kind of psychological manipulation going on here.
[00:48:30]  I think kind of it's, you know, the expectations on the members, especially the kind of celibate members were so great.
[00:48:41]  Every minute of their existence was controlled.
[00:48:43]  And, you know, they had this huge list of things that they had to do every single day and often really struggled to kind of fit them in.
[00:48:52]  And then on top of that, to force them to kind of basically inflict Physical pain on themselves is, I think, it's another part of the kind of control mechanism.
[00:49:05]  And it's a way of kind of weakening them into submission.
[00:49:09]  It's all dressed up with like, ah, you're just suffering like Christ did.
[00:49:13]  And it has all of this kind of religiosity kind of placed on top of it to justify what's happening.
[00:49:18]  But I think the bottom line is this is about control, coercion, and weakening the members, weakening the individuality.
[00:49:28]  So let's go back because we're back in, we're in Spain in the 1930s.
[00:49:33]  And so we got to talk about Franco, who is central to the story of how Opus Day became as large.
[00:49:42]  I don't know if large is the right word, but as we'll say, influential as it is today.
[00:49:52]  And, you know, Escriva became very close with Franco and Opus Day, you know, Opus Day's members were, you know, all over Franco's side in Spain.
[00:50:04]  And that became kind of like a, you know, a pretty inseparable part of the group.
[00:50:09]  Yeah, totally.
[00:50:10]  I mean, I mean, Franco at one stage invited Escriva to come and give Franco and his wife a private six-day retreat at the palace.
[00:50:20]  You know, for six days, it was just literally Franco, his wife, and Escriva kind of leading the retreat.
[00:50:27]  But I think we have to kind of reverse a little bit as well, because so when he first came up with this idea of Opus Day, the pitch, let's call it the pitch, the pitch was that we're a new organization for serious Catholics who kind of want to go a bit deeper into their faith.
[00:50:49]  We're for people who, for those Catholics who, you know, just going to Mass once a week and going to confession, maybe, or maybe going to Mass every day, that's not enough.
[00:50:59]  They want to go, you know, they want to kind of take it up a notch.
[00:51:03]  But they don't want to become priests or nuns.
[00:51:05]  So we're kind of, he spotted, I guess, a gap in the market for something in between.
[00:51:09]  Oh, yeah.
[00:51:09]  Yeah.
[00:51:10]  And I think that's kind of really, I think that's the, you know, that's genuinely what he wanted to do when he started off.
[00:51:24]  That was the vision, I guess, that he'd received.
[00:51:27]  But this was Spain in the early 1930s.
[00:51:29]  This was a country deeply divided on the brink of civil war.
[00:51:33]  The workers had literally risen up and overthrown the monarchy.
[00:51:39]  And they were turning their backs on all of these institutions that had kind of, I guess, suppressed them over the years, including the church.
[00:51:47]  So this new kind of Republican government was starting to push the church aside in society at large, and in particular in places like education.
[00:51:59]  The church had previously basically had a monopoly over educating kids and the new government was like, just a minute, maybe we should kind of secularize education and kind of, and so Escrivá saw what was happening around him and he was absolutely horrified.
[00:52:17]  He saw this kind of, you know, the Catholic, sorry, the Spanish people, a people that had been so devoutly Catholic and proudly Catholic for centuries, turning their back on this institution that he himself had dedicated his life to.
[00:52:36]  And in his writings, you see in the early 30s a complete evolution.
[00:52:42]  He starts to basically rethink what Opus Day is.
[00:52:47]  And, you know, this supposedly fully formed vision begins to go through all of these mutations.
[00:52:53]  And he starts to talk about his membership as being part of a militia who were going to rise up and enter into battle.
[00:53:03]  These are his words, enter into battle against the enemies of Christ.
[00:53:07]  And he envisions the Opus Day from that moment on as effectively as a political organization.
[00:53:16]  He tasks his members with infiltrating every element of society and abusing their positions, though you might say, to kind of follow out on the orders of Christ, which of course will come through Escrivar himself.
[00:53:30]  And so this is like, you know, the eve of the Spanish Civil War.
[00:53:35]  The Civil War hits for, you know, the army generals take over much of Spain, but Madrid is still kind of in Republican hands.
[00:53:45]  Escrivar is trapped in this Republican zone and he hides.

=== Special Status Controversy (15:11) ===

[00:53:49]  I mean, as Brace was saying, he hides in an embassy, in the Honduran embassy.
[00:53:54]  But Franco wins.
[00:53:56]  And, you know, that changes everything for Escrivar.
[00:54:01]  He suddenly starts to, he closes up to the regime.
[00:54:04]  He gets all of this support from the regime, financial support, operational support.
[00:54:09]  They allow him to open up all of these student residences, which make it much easier for him to recruit members.
[00:54:16]  And it really becomes this kind of symbiotic relationship.
[00:54:21]  You know, Opus Day benefits hugely from its connections to the regime, but it also is very supportive of the regime and its policies.
[00:54:32]  And it starts to breed this new, I guess, radicalized, conservative membership, which later end up dominating Franco's cabinets.
[00:54:45]  By the late 60s, I think half of the cabinet is made up of Opus Day members.
[00:54:51]  Yeah, it's sort of extraordinary because, you know, Opus Day's whole claim that they're this like kind of apolitical organization dedicated to, you know, just a particular brand of worship, you know, it sort of puts the lie to that.
[00:55:05]  You know, Jose Maria Escriva, they sort of distance from Franco in these ways.
[00:55:09]  But like, you know, it's possible that Opus Day, you know, I'm sure it could have existed without the largesse of Franco.
[00:55:16]  And I don't mean just literally, but, you know, the sort of benefits that they got from being close to the government, but certainly would not be anything like the force it is today.
[00:55:27]  It seems like a huge amount of their temporal power came from essentially the like the spoils of the eventual spoils of this war and this long-term project that Jose Maria Escriva had of putting his guys into like these kind of prominent positions.
[00:55:45]  Now, they claim not to be doing this on purpose or anything.
[00:55:49]  You know, I do think it's, I do think it's very interesting that the ferment, which you mentioned the book, but like the ferment that he comes out of is this very conspiratorial Catholicism in the 1920s and 1930s where like the Freemasons and the Jews and the Bolsheviks have this sort of like triumvirate and they're trying to take over Spain and destroy Catholicism and blah, And they're putting all their people into power.
[00:56:11]  Jose Maria Escriva kind of does his own version of this with his own sort of almost Masonic-like organization within the church and really does put like, you know, you mentioned half of the cabinet of the Franco government at some point in the 1960s were Opus Day members.
[00:56:30]  But really like the people behind the Spanish miracle and sort of the people who gave the Franco regime kind of a little more time, you know, because the Spanish economy had, I don't think had ever been good in really in modern history up until then.
[00:56:48]  I mean, certainly not in the 20th century.
[00:56:51]  You know, the guys behind the Spanish Miracle were Opus Day guys.
[00:56:55]  And he did benefit.
[00:56:56]  I mean, we talk about Banco Popular.
[00:56:58]  It's like, that's how you kind of got into this.
[00:56:59]  But like, really, a lot of the, I guess just like the, I don't know what you want to call it, like the double dealing coming from the government under Franco.
[00:57:12]  Like a lot of that happened with these Opus Day guys.
[00:57:14]  And some of them got pretty large financial portfolios.
[00:57:18]  I mean, there was a things kind of became so screwed up that, you know, in the late 60s, there was this enormous scandal in Spain called the Mateza scandal.
[00:57:30]  It's kind of extraordinary if you think back.
[00:57:32]  Well, basically, this company invented this new power loom or something, something to do with textiles or whatever.
[00:57:39]  That's the shit they kind of, that's the kind of shit they invent in Spain.
[00:57:42]  And And they supposedly won all these contracts to, this was some kind of groundbreaking technology in the textile industry or whatever.
[00:57:51]  And they won all of these contracts to export this machine all over the world.
[00:57:56]  But they needed money to finance the manufacture of these machines, which the Spanish government provided.
[00:58:05]  And turns out that it was all a complete scam.
[00:58:09]  And, you know, billions, in today's money, billions of dollars were basically kind of hived off from this plan.
[00:58:19]  And a lot of the money went to Opus Day.
[00:58:23]  And so this became an enormous scandal in Spain at the time.
[00:58:27]  But Franco, instead of punishing them, he ended up rewarding them.
[00:58:33]  So inside the Spanish government, a bunch of people that weren't part of Opus Day were like, what the fuck is going on?
[00:58:40]  The Falangists.
[00:58:42]  Yes, exactly.
[00:58:43]  The Falanje, they were basically saying, we need to kick these Opus Day guys out.
[00:58:49]  They're dirty.
[00:58:49]  They're corrupt.
[00:58:51]  And they made a big fuss.
[00:58:52]  They leaked all of this information to the newspapers.
[00:58:54]  And what did Franco do when presented with all this information?
[00:58:58]  He ended up booting at the Falanke guys and promoting the Opus Day guys because he was annoyed that this corruption had made it to the papers.
[00:59:08]  And there's a line in the book which comes from one of the greatest modern Spanish historians, a guy called Paul Preston.
[00:59:17]  He kind of unearthed this bit of information.
[00:59:20]  Franco, when presented with all this information, he said to the Falanke guys, like, what do you have against Opus Day?
[00:59:26]  Like, because whilst these guys are helping out the regime, you guys are just fucking about.
[00:59:32]  And so he kind of kicked them out, promoted all the Opus Day guys.
[00:59:35]  So by the end of the 60s and, you know, the final years of the Franco regime, you had this really kind of odd relationship, this really corrupt relationship where both sides were kind of helping each other out.
[00:59:50]  And both sides were kind of turning a blind eye to, I guess, the dark stuff that was happening because, you know, they were kind of mutually beneficial, this relationship.
[01:00:01]  It's funny, you mentioned Paul Preston because I was just looking him up the other night because I read a few of his books.
[01:00:06]  And he has a new one that he wrote called his last one is called Perfidious Albion, which is one of my favorite phrases.
[01:00:16]  So, all right, fuck Spain.
[01:00:18]  Let's get to the Vatican.
[01:00:20]  So, Jose Maria Escriva, you'd think that like you're in the Vatican.
[01:00:23]  You're like, listen, we're Italian.
[01:00:26]  These Spanish guys, they're coming over here.
[01:00:28]  They're big dogging around.
[01:00:30]  What's going on here?
[01:00:31]  He gets, he moves to the Vatican.
[01:00:32]  He creates this like giant, the villa, what's it called?
[01:00:35]  The Villa Tre.
[01:00:37]  I'm totally blanking on it.
[01:00:39]  Forgive my Italian pronunciation, but I think it's something like Villa Tevere.
[01:00:44]  Well, he creates the thing that you just said, and it's like this big fucking like palace that they live in.
[01:00:49]  And he has it completely mic'd up, which I thought was a kind of incredible detail.
[01:00:54]  He has it like, he has this total sort of total surveillance system there.
[01:00:57]  And it seems like he kind of like heads there and just becomes this player in the power politics of the Vatican.
[01:01:04]  And it is, you know, I don't know.
[01:01:07]  Listen, I'm not, I've only recently converted to Catholicism, you know, about 35, 40 minutes ago.
[01:01:15]  And so I'm not totally clear on this, but like he's trying to make it like he's trying to bump Opus Day's status up.
[01:01:22]  And now I don't know all the statuses of things that you can be if you're an organization like this in the Catholic Church, but you want to be recognized and you want to be given some like govern, I guess, under some like some Vatican law or whatever.
[01:01:36]  Yeah, you want to be legitimized.
[01:01:38]  I don't remember at what point, but you mentioned this in the book, but like when he's not getting his way, he's like, maybe we'll go to the Greek Orthodox Church or we'll check out some other churches, which I thought was a scandalous possible or even the heretical almost kind of thought of betrayal.
[01:01:58]  But he's like really trying to get Opus Day cemented as like a legitimate organization.
[01:02:03]  And the way you describe like the maneuverings he does in the Vatican, it seems like a full-time job.
[01:02:10]  I mean, I think my interpretation is that he gets kind of a bit full of himself.
[01:02:19]  I mean, he's the leader of this cult.
[01:02:22]  Everyone worships the ground he walks upon and everything he says.
[01:02:27]  No one questions a thing.
[01:02:29]  You know, he's got this kind of iron fist.
[01:02:31]  He's installing microphones to listen into what his followers are saying about him in secrets.
[01:02:38]  And I actually tracked down the priest that helped to install the microphones.
[01:02:42]  He had some incredible stories for me about that.
[01:02:45]  And the and yeah, I mean, at one stage, he starts to question why the Vatican isn't showing him more respect.
[01:03:00]  You know, the Vatican has approved Opus Day at this point and kind of given them remits to kind of like expand around the world.
[01:03:07]  But they're kind of the given this label, which is kind of, they're called a pious union.
[01:03:15]  And there are loads of other pious unions.
[01:03:17]  And Escriva is just a bit like, just a minute.
[01:03:19]  Why do I have to be like the same status as these guys?
[01:03:22]  We're so much greater than, you know, Opus Day at this stage, you know, has expanded to like 60 countries around the world.
[01:03:30]  It's on every kind of every continent and has tens of thousands of members.
[01:03:36]  And so he begins to lobby the Vatican.
[01:03:38]  And at first, the Vatican's like, who is this guy?
[01:03:42]  Like, really?
[01:03:44]  And they kind of bat him off.
[01:03:46]  And I think they've become kind of annoyed with him.
[01:03:49]  At one stage, actually, Escriva sends this really angry letter to Pope Paul VI, basically kind of demanding, like, why the hell are you not kind of listening to us and giving us the status that we so deserve?
[01:04:05]  He's reprimanded by the Pope.
[01:04:07]  And at one stage, the Pope even considers launching an investigation into Opus Day because there are all these rumors that it's been spying on the Vatican and has all these double agents.
[01:04:18]  Anyway, that kind of goes away.
[01:04:20]  But throughout the 60s and 70s, there's this kind of tension with Escrivar very much wanting to be recognized as being an important figure in the church.
[01:04:34]  And basically the Vatican kind of saying, go away, we've got other stuff to do.
[01:04:39]  And like, yeah, whatever.
[01:04:42]  Escriva dies in 1975 without having achieved this goal of special status for Opus Day.
[01:04:51]  But then in 1978, a new pope is elected, Pope John Paul II.
[01:04:56]  Where is he from?
[01:04:57]  He's from Poland.
[01:04:59]  Oh.
[01:05:01]  And, you know, I discovered that actually in the early 70s, late 60s, early 70s, Opus Day had begun to groom this guy.
[01:05:13]  You know, whenever this young bishop from Poland came to visit Rome, they would kind of cozy up to him.
[01:05:22]  They would, you know, they would take him for meals.
[01:05:25]  They later decided to like publish his speeches in books.
[01:05:29]  They would host him at conferences.
[01:05:31]  You know, they saw him as an up and coming figure and they decided to get close.
[01:05:35]  They built this special organization to do that in Rome to basically, you know, to spot people who might be powerful in future and to, you know, foster a good relationship with them.
[01:05:47]  And so when, you know, when this Bishop Vojtiwa comes to, comes to, who would later become Pope John Paul II, comes to Rome for the conclave, one of the first places he visits is the Opus Day headquarters.
[01:06:04]  And he goes down into the crypts and he prays, you know, next to the tomb of Escriva alongside the new leader of Opus Day.
[01:06:15]  And once he's elected pope, like within weeks, Opus Day is on track to get this special status that it wants.
[01:06:25]  Now it's got a friend in, you know, on the throne on St. Peter's throne.
[01:06:31]  you know, they take complete advantage and they basically get what they've been wanting all along.
[01:06:38]  Can we talk about this special status real quick?
[01:06:41]  Because it is, it's, I would say, extremely special in the sense that Opus, it's basically a carve-out for Opus Day within the, I guess, canon law, right?
[01:06:52]  That it is this like protected organization, one of one.
[01:06:57]  There's no other organization that falls under these rules except for Opus Day.
[01:07:02]  And this was always the sort of, you know, just to bring it back a little bit to Francis, like one of the looming threats was that he was going to revoke this special status.
[01:07:12]  Well, actually, Francis was in the process of revoking a lot of the special, the kind of, I guess, the privileges that came with this status.
[01:07:21]  I think, so what they were given, it took a few years for it all to kind of come through.
[01:07:27]  The process began in 78, but it was in 1982 they were actually given this status.
[01:07:34]  They were granted the status, which is called personal prelature.
[01:07:42]  And so they were the very first personal prelature in the 2000-year history of the Catholic Church.
[01:07:48]  The very first and the only one that has ever existed.
[01:07:52]  And so, and what that meant was that they, I mean, I like how you phrased it there.
[01:07:57]  I mean, was yes, it was basically a carve-out for them.
[01:08:02]  They were basically given the ability to operate anywhere in the world and to operate crucially outside of the normal hierarchy of the church.
[01:08:13]  So, you know, if they set up shop in Baltimore or in Rio or in Cape Town, they didn't have to answer to the local archbishop.
[01:08:24]  They could do whatever they wanted.
[01:08:25]  And if they did something wrong or did something untoward, the local bishop couldn't do anything.
[01:08:30]  They were answerable to nobody else but the Pope.
[01:08:34]  So yes, I mean, they became this kind of, I guess, this special force.
[01:08:39]  And I think that's partly why John Paul II did this.
[01:08:42]  I mean, he came into the church.
[01:08:46]  The church was, I mean, a bit like today, deeply divided between kind of left and right.
[01:08:53]  And I think he wanted his own almost kind of personal army, for want of a better word, who a group that's a great sign.

=== Bill Barr's Special Force (05:42) ===

[01:09:01]  Great sign, by the way.
[01:09:02]  A group that he, a group of conservative, of like-minded conservatives that he could dispatch to problematic parts of the world and who would be loyal to him.
[01:09:11]  Because there are all of these kind of progressive archbishops around the world who were questioning the Pope's authority, who, you know, certainly in the 80s, they were becoming very vocal about, you know, the Reagan administration's policies in places like Central America.
[01:09:26]  And the Pope hated this, but he knew with Opus Day, they were reliable.
[01:09:31]  And so by giving them the special caveat, yes, he kind of really, I guess, turbocharged the growth around the world.
[01:09:43]  And also, I guess it was almost nod.
[01:09:47]  So if you were a conservative Catholic supporter of the Pope, of Pope John Paul II, this was an organization that you should, you know, respect and turn to.
[01:09:57]  And, you know, they, especially in the U.S., they managed to increase their membership quite dramatically in those years.
[01:10:05]  Yeah, no, let's talk about the U.S. because you have a line in the book.
[01:10:09]  You say, like, not since the Franco regime had the movement had such direct access to political power.
[01:10:15]  And I mean, you know, talking about the Reagan years and into the 90s, but it really is hard to talk about Catholicism in America without talking about Opus Day, even though we don't do that.
[01:10:29]  We don't talk about Opus Day when we talk about Catholicism in America.
[01:10:32]  But it is crazy when you look at, and you lay this out in the book so well, right?
[01:10:36]  But you look at the big front-facing Catholic figures in America.
[01:10:41]  And a lot of them are Opus Day affiliated, right?
[01:10:45]  Like, you know, even someone like Leonard Leo, right?
[01:10:49]  Who you devote a good portion of your book to him.
[01:10:53]  And, you know, he's not just the architect of the conservative judiciary in America, but also deeply embedded in Catholic power structures and the funding networks and in these legal foundations, all of the campus initiatives, you know, so on and so forth.
[01:11:09]  Like, how does he fit into this world that we've been talking about?
[01:11:13]  Like, how much of his project or his like organ, his like backers projects, I mean, it's kind of hard to say, right?
[01:11:20]  Like, how much is that about the law and shaping the government?
[01:11:24]  How much is it about faith?
[01:11:25]  Like, is the court just a mechanism or is this something, you know, is this a larger project?
[01:11:31]  So it's no accident that, you know, like if you look at the current administration and kind of, I guess, the Republican Party more generally, it's no accident that a lot of the people in positions of power, a lot of the kind of prominent Catholic figures with, you know, within the Republican movement and within the conservative movement more generally are in some way kind of affiliated to Opus Day or,
[01:12:00]  you know, in some cases, full kind of signed up members of Opus Day.
[01:12:06]  And the reason that that's no accident is because throughout its history, you know, ever since that moment I was talking about earlier where the founder takes the initial vision and politicizes it, decides that he's going to create this militia and decides that his followers need to infiltrate the levers of society, government and the judiciary, business, education.
[01:12:36]  From that moment on Opus Day very much targets its recruitment of members towards either people who are already in positions of power or the next generation of political leaders.
[01:12:52]  So it's got this kind of two-track thing.
[01:12:55]  It's targeting successful business people, they're targeting judges, they're targeting politicians.
[01:13:03]  At the same time, they're setting up schools and university campuses where they're trying to spot the best and the brightest because they know that those kids are going to be the leaders of tomorrow.
[01:13:15]  And so they've kind of got this dual-track recruitment process.
[01:13:19]  As a slight aside, I mean, something that's quite telling as well is that unlike the rest of the Catholic Church, which anyone is free to join, Opus Day is kind of by invitation only.
[01:13:33]  You can't go onto the Opus Day website and say, hey, I want to join, kind of punch in your name and address and you get like a bunch of pamphlets in the pulse.
[01:13:40]  It does not work that way.
[01:13:42]  They find you and they decide that they want you as a member and they invite you in.
[01:13:47]  That's the only way to join.
[01:13:49]  And so, so yes, I mean, so for its entire history, Opus Day has been targeting the powerful and the rich as well, because with money, they can, you know, they can buy, they can expand and buy more centers or whatever.
[01:14:07]  And so I think, you know, by the early 2000s, Opus Day had really quite successfully, after a few kind of false starts, it had really started really quite successfully inserted itself into the kind of very fabric of conservative life in Washington.
[01:14:27]  Obviously, particularly focused on Catholics, but Opus Day is more than just its membership.
[01:14:33]  It's kind of a whole network.
[01:14:35]  And so, so, yeah, I mean, you had, you know, figures like kind of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

=== Opus Day's Rise in Washington (14:46) ===

[01:14:43]  And, you know, in more recent years, obviously, you've had people like Leonard Leo, Mick Mulvaney, Bill Barr.
[01:14:51]  Yeah, I was going to say Bill Barr.
[01:14:53]  Yes, absolutely.
[01:14:53]  And also, you know, something that's, I guess, much more current, Kevin Roberts.
[01:14:57]  You know, Kevin Roberts, a video emerged of Kevin Roberts just last year, where he basically admitted that he goes to the Opus Day center in central DC to get what he calls spiritual direction every week.
[01:15:12]  He's being whipped.
[01:15:14]  He's not talked about that.
[01:15:17]  Show us your back.
[01:15:18]  Show us.
[01:15:19]  Imagine.
[01:15:19]  And, you know, You don't have to comment on this, but just I want our listeners to imagine here the sound of a discipline hitting Newt Gingrich's back as he whips himself in front of Callista, you know, as she's sort of decked out in these, you know, these metal garters or whatever.
[01:15:41]  I mean, this is crazy.
[01:15:43]  The problem is, is that in my head, I can only see it with the Instagram filters that she always puts on her photos.
[01:15:49]  So it's all like blurred out a little bit.
[01:15:52]  Yes.
[01:15:53]  Yasify.
[01:15:54]  Yes.
[01:15:56]  I'll not comment on the sound of a discipline hitting hitting Buskin, I think.
[01:16:01]  I mean, for our listeners who don't know, I mean, I do want to say explicitly, Kevin Roberts, who's the president of the Heritage Foundation, right?
[01:16:07]  And also wrote or, you know, wrote, is the architect, they like to say, of Project 2025 and the kind of like blueprint for the Trump admin.
[01:16:19]  And he wrote a book last year that came out.
[01:16:22]  I can't remember what it's called, but it's something terrifying.
[01:16:25]  Like it's like the plan for the next century or something like that.
[01:16:28]  Or a new dawn is breaking.
[01:16:30]  I mean, the title of the book had to be changed because it was so, I guess, it almost went too far.
[01:16:36]  I can't remember what the, I think they ended up calling it something like Breaking Dawn or something like that.
[01:16:42]  Which I think is like Twilight, by the way.
[01:16:44]  Yes.
[01:16:45]  It is.
[01:16:46]  Yeah.
[01:16:47]  But they had a much more kind of combative title before that.
[01:16:53]  But I think the publisher kind of scrapped it and decided that maybe that was a bit too far.
[01:16:58]  But it gives you an insight.
[01:16:59]  I mean, and I mean, in this video that I unearthed, basically he goes on record talking about how great Escrivar was.
[01:17:09]  I mean, it's, you know, whether he's a fully signed up member, whether he whipped himself and was a sillis under his suit, those are questions that only he can answer.
[01:17:21]  But he clearly reveres this guy, you know, and Escriva, you know, he's the founder of this abusive cult, a guy that was close to Franco, a guy who was deeply misogynist and had this horrible temper and who listened, you know, like Kevin Roberts clearly looks up to this guy.
[01:17:46]  I mean, yeah, yeah.
[01:17:48]  I mean, and then there's JD Vance, right?
[01:17:50]  We haven't even, he's probably the most visible American Catholic now and just getting in fights with whoever he can about it on Twitter.
[01:18:01]  And basically, I mean, I think it's fair to say a political product of this entire ecosystem, even, you know, down to being an adult convert, right?
[01:18:11]  Like he has some ties to Tim Bush.
[01:18:14]  He wrote the foreword to Kevin Roberts book.
[01:18:18]  And, you know, his, he has connections to the same like Catholic institutions, whether that's like Napa or sorry, the, you know, the Napa organization that that Tim Bush heads or the Catholic Information Center, which maybe we can talk about, which is this big organization in DC, Ave Maria, like the whole orbit of these sort of American funding and influence networks.
[01:18:42]  Like, you don't know, like you say, if he is, he's Opus Day, but he's definitely a key figurehead for this new American political Catholicism, which is like highly rationalist, traditionalist, and I would say aggressively like post-liberal is the best way to put it.
[01:19:01]  Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, to be completely honest, I do not know whether JD Vance is Opus Day or not.
[01:19:11]  Only he can answer that question.
[01:19:14]  But he certainly operates in the same circles as a number of people who are connected closely to Opus Day.
[01:19:23]  And he's part of this really kind of traditionalist, reactionary, and quite aggressive, aggressively politicized version of Catholicism, which was so at odds with the Catholic Church that Pope Francis was trying to project.
[01:19:50]  And, you know, on a number of occasions, the two of them came into, you know, JD Vance and Pope Francis were certainly at loggerheads.
[01:19:57]  I mean, at one stage, Pope Francis wrote a letter to the US bishops, which was a clear rebuke of JD Vance and his mischaracterization of Catholic doctrine in order to kind of support his own deeply immoral policies.
[01:20:18]  And then, you know, just before he died, I think literally the day before Pope Francis, sorry, two days before Pope Francis died, JD Vance wanted a meeting with the Pope.
[01:20:28]  The Pope kind of turned him down.
[01:20:31]  And instead, JD Vance was sent to have a meeting with Francis's second in command, who then basically gave him a dressing down, but you know, gave him this lecture about compassion.
[01:20:43]  You know, the message was, you're not being, you're not a compassionate Catholic.
[01:20:49]  A day later, Pope Francis did, I guess, on the insistence of JD Vance's team, did eventually meet him, which triggered obviously all of the memes because the Pope died the day afterwards.
[01:21:01]  But yeah, I mean, I think.
[01:21:03]  Sorry, like, remember that woman who made Ruth Peter Ginsburg officiate her COVID wedding?
[01:21:09]  Yes, her COVID.
[01:21:10]  Yeah, the Ruth Peter Ginsburg COVID wedding.
[01:21:13]  Oof.
[01:21:13]  Anyway, but yeah, I mean, I mean, this kind of this group of really quite radical, uh, politicized reactionary Catholics are kind of really very much in the ascendancy in Washington, D.C. You know, like a majority of the Supreme Court these days is Catholic.
[01:21:34]  And not just kind of, we're not just kind of talking, you know, ordinary everyday Catholics like, you know, my father and, you know, my, my entire, my. my partner's family, the whole of her family is Catholic.
[01:21:45]  You know, this is not kind of your average run-of-the-mill Catholic.
[01:21:49]  These are people who are like staunch.
[01:21:51]  We only go to Latin Mass.
[01:21:53]  Like, you know, like it's more of destroy Vatican II.
[01:21:58]  It's, it's, you know, for them, Catholicism is like almost a political statement.
[01:22:05]  And, you know, again, only JD Vance can talk about why he converted, but he certainly converted into a movement that was in, I guess, this kind of political ascendancy in Washington, D.C.
[01:22:20]  And I'm sure hasn't hurt him, let's say, as he's risen up.
[01:22:27]  I want to ask, just JD Vance got me thinking because of the Peter Thiel stuff.
[01:22:33]  So they like, you know, you mentioned, I think you give a sort of breakdown of the group home, I guess, that forgive me, I cannot pronounce the guy's name.
[01:22:46]  The fucking Banco Popular guy, Louis.
[01:22:49]  Louis, Louis, just call him Louis.
[01:22:51]  Louis Vance, he's called it.
[01:22:53]  So, you know, he kind of goes between this like house he has in the country and this opus day house.
[01:22:58]  The description you give of the opus day house that he lives in is one of the craziest motherfucking things I've ever heard in my life.
[01:23:05]  It's like a giant house that's half men, half women.
[01:23:08]  There's a door that needs to be unlocked by both sides.
[01:23:12]  In the middle, it has to be unlocked by both keys.
[01:23:15]  They aren't allowed to communicate with each other at all.
[01:23:18]  But this is sort of of a piece with like this larger Opus Day, both like schooling and home network throughout the world.
[01:23:29]  One thing that it seems to be integral part of that, or an integral part of that rather, is the help, I guess we should say.
[01:23:39]  And I think that is where sort of the human trafficking part of the title of the book comes from.
[01:23:45]  So I don't really understand how Catholicism works, maybe.
[01:23:49]  I'm still learning.
[01:23:50]  In Opus Day, there's like guys who are sort of higher earners.
[01:23:54]  And like, let's say, you know, they bring back home the big bucks.
[01:23:56]  They're allowed a little bit more leeway.
[01:23:58]  The leases are little bit longer.
[01:24:00]  Then there's like the guys who like live in these group homes who like under this crazy discipline.
[01:24:06]  They kiss the floor every morning.
[01:24:08]  They whip, you know, they wear the little things and they do the BDSM stuff.
[01:24:11]  And then there's sort of just like regular guys who don't live at the houses and stuff like that.
[01:24:17]  And then there seemed to be like a large underclass of women or girls that are recruited as teenagers from like third world villages that are flown throughout the world and made to like serve people for no money.
[01:24:29]  Yes, I mean, totally.
[01:24:31]  So Opus Day just a few days before the book came out.
[01:24:37]  I mean, so we.
[01:24:38]  you know, we were kind of, I guess, sticking our necks out on the line when we put human trafficking in the title.
[01:24:46]  But we were pretty confident that we had a strong case and that we had a good amount of evidence.
[01:24:52]  And, you know, we were getting a lot of flack from the Opus Day lawyers.
[01:24:55]  They were threatening us with all kinds of stuff.
[01:24:57]  And then just a few days before the book was actually launched, the book had already been printed at this stage and was kind of sitting in, I guess, the back room in boxes and bookshops or whatever.
[01:25:08]  So this was too late to change the book.
[01:25:11]  But then a few days before the book kind of went on sale, federal prosecutors in Argentina brought kind of these, made these formal accusations.
[01:25:22]  They've been investigating Opus Day for a couple of years and they formally accused Opus Day of human trafficking.
[01:25:27]  And this relates to this kind of underclass of membership that they have.
[01:25:33]  So we were saying before that Opus Day always targets the elites.
[01:25:38]  Those are the only members that it wants.
[01:25:42]  But a lot of the men and the, well, some of the men, some of the women live in these kind of Opus Day lodges, these gender segregated Opus Day lodges.
[01:25:54]  And they're out in the world doing their important work.
[01:25:57]  And what they need is someone to cook and clean for them and do whatever.
[01:26:01]  And I think quite early on, the founder of Opus Dei realized that it wasn't kind of realistic to get outside help because they're going to start asking questions about the way these hazards will run.
[01:26:14]  Why is Newt Gingrich whipping himself?
[01:26:16]  And so he decided that actually they needed to create this new underclass of membership specifically for women or specifically for young girls who would also become members, would commit themselves to Opus Day, would take these kind of pledges of celibacy and obedience, like the elite members.
[01:26:40]  But they were specifically, instead of being recruited from the elite, they were specifically recruited from underprivileged communities.
[01:26:46]  And so this most recent case in Argentina, I mean, this still goes on today, right?
[01:26:52]  I mean, this most recent case in Argentina stems from all of these women who, you know, back when they were girls, they were like 12, 13 years old.
[01:27:01]  They were recruited.
[01:27:02]  They were living, you know, out in the countryside in Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina.
[01:27:08]  Opus Day members would visit the village and they would spot the targets and these Opus Day members would go to the families and say, hey, I see you've got a young girl here.
[01:27:23]  Well, around here, there are not too many great opportunities.
[01:27:27]  But hey, we run this great school, this great hospitality school back in the big city.
[01:27:32]  Why don't you send her back with us?
[01:27:35]  We'll give her this great education.
[01:27:37]  She can work towards all these qualifications and a better life.
[01:27:41]  And, you know, she can have the pick of hospitality careers when she's older.
[01:27:47]  And so the parents are like, wow, this Catholic organization's coming, knocking on our door, offering this great opportunity for our kids.
[01:27:53]  The girls are like, this sounds cool.
[01:27:57]  And, you know, only when these girls are like hundreds of miles away from their families do they kind of realize what they've got themselves into.
[01:28:05]  And slowly they are kind of brainwashed, coerced into joining Opus Day.
[01:28:10]  And then they, you know, once they join, they basically become slaves.
[01:28:14]  They, you know, many of them working for 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[01:28:21]  Many of these women were not allowed to go out onto the street on their own, unaccompanied.
[01:28:25]  They're not paid.
[01:28:27]  And so, you know, this case has come from that.
[01:28:30]  But it's not something that's specific to, this is just Argentina at the moment.
[01:28:34]  I know the authorities are looking into similar instances in other parts of the world.
[01:28:39]  I know for a fact that these schools existed in, you know, places like Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, across Europe, across Latin America.
[01:28:49]  You know, this is a whole, there was a whole global network of schools which recruited these underprivileged kids as servants, as unpaid servants for the elite members of Opus Day.
[01:29:03]  And then they were flown to Washington or wherever.
[01:29:06]  I mean, these Opus Day elite lodges exist all over the world.
[01:29:12]  I think in Washington, D.C., for example, there are four lodges just in that one city.
[01:29:18]  In New York, there are a bunch of lodges as well.
[01:29:21]  I mean, these places are all over.
[01:29:23]  But it's funny, you know, when those lawsuits dropped, I mean, it caused a huge scandal all throughout Europe.

=== Media Landscape's Silent Touch (02:45) ===

[01:29:30]  And then it barely registered on the news in America.
[01:29:33]  I don't know, like, it really didn't seem to get the kind of shine that, let's say, other, yeah, I would say other like church scandals have.
[01:29:43]  And, you know, some of that I've read and you talk about how like that gave Opus Day, American Opus Day members or right-wing American Catholic members who were sympathetic to Opus Day, we'll say, a lot of confidence about moving forward sort of out in the open with a lot of their political projects.
[01:30:08]  I think religion is a bit of a taboo for a lot of media organizations.
[01:30:15]  I've certainly found that with my book.
[01:30:18]  I mean, my book doesn't pull any punches, but it's also, you know, it's completely based on fact.
[01:30:24]  It's been, you know, it's been through the lawyers, it's been through several rounds of lawyers.
[01:30:29]  what we say in the book is it's true and still i you know there's a i i can sense a certain reluctance from certain parts of the media to even kind of touch that because it's maybe a little bit risque and we don't offend these people or whatever And yeah, it's kind of, it's really odd.
[01:30:49]  But also, I think the kind of natural part of the media landscape that might have touched this story, which is the kind of, you know, the Catholic media, which is, which is vast.
[01:31:01]  I mean, there are, you know, dozens of publications and media outlets that are dedicated to covering Catholic life and Catholic organizations.
[01:31:11]  You know, a lot of those have over the years been taken over by arch conservative Catholics who aren't, you know, these are not people who are neutral and who are wanting to report the news as, you know, as it is.
[01:31:29]  They have an agenda and part of that agenda is protecting this organization, which is seen as a as a as a kind of as a righteous movement and very much part of this kind of reactionary groundswell, I guess, that's kind of rushing through America and which has taken over the government.
[01:31:51]  And so I think there's been a bit of pushback in terms of kind of talking about this.
[01:31:57]  And hopefully my book has broken through some of that.
[01:32:01]  And, you know, I certainly talk about it as much as I possibly can.
[01:32:04]  And I thank, you know, shows like your own for kind of giving me a voice and for giving these women a voice.
[01:32:11]  I mean, these are 42 women who kind of brought these charges in Argentina.

=== Peru's Hidden Mass (08:35) ===

[01:32:15]  It's not just like one woman who had a bad experience.
[01:32:19]  This is kind of systematic abuse.
[01:32:21]  And it's global in scale.
[01:32:23]  I think, you know, this could well be the next major abuse scandal in the church.
[01:32:29]  You know, we're just at the very beginning of this, I think.
[01:32:33]  Well, to sort of wrap up here, you know, we have a new pope.
[01:32:39]  I didn't vote for him.
[01:32:41]  I was in the conclave, but he did get elected.
[01:32:46]  And I think it's, you know, there's an American Pope, blah, All the implications of that.
[01:32:54]  You know, is he going to move the Vatican to, you know, somewhere in the Midwest?
[01:32:59]  We don't know that.
[01:32:59]  Is he going to start wearing sort of big jean shorts like a lot of American young people?
[01:33:04]  Is he going to get a back tattoo of angel wings, possibly to symbolize his closeness to God?
[01:33:09]  We are not sure about that stuff yet.
[01:33:11]  One thing is for sure is he's not a member of Opus Day, he's an Augustinian, which I was looking up the guys who wear the black robes and little rope belts.
[01:33:20]  And I got to tell you, that's a great look.
[01:33:23]  I do love that look.
[01:33:25]  But I wonder if, you know, if the if they, because the rope belts are probably, I wonder, because you know, I sometimes I ask the Hasidic guys how much their hats are, and they're like, this was $2,000.
[01:33:36]  I wonder if there's a really nice rope belt these guys get.
[01:33:38]  But, you know, they have like a rope guy who does them for like, you know, 50K or whatever.
[01:33:43]  It's Catholic Church.
[01:33:44]  He can afford it.
[01:33:47]  There was a picture of him next to Escrivar.
[01:33:51]  Not the actual Escrivar, but a picture of him next to a picture of Escrivar, which you wrote about a little bit.
[01:33:57]  So Jose Marie Escrivar is now a saint.
[01:34:02]  And I'm not going to have you, you don't have to comment on this.
[01:34:05]  I got to say, I looked into his miracle, one of his miracles extensively.
[01:34:11]  It's a, it's a, it's not a great miracle.
[01:34:16]  I'm going to just, I'm going to be honest.
[01:34:17]  I know a lot about miracles.
[01:34:19]  You know, I work with one every time we do this show.
[01:34:22]  And I'm not you, Liz, so don't shake your head in chastisement.
[01:34:26]  But you're not a miracle.
[01:34:29]  You are, you are a God to me.
[01:34:31]  But the, I looked into his miracle.
[01:34:33]  The miracle is not so good.
[01:34:35]  He is a saint now.
[01:34:36]  What is this?
[01:34:38]  What is this picture?
[01:34:39]  Does this mean anything?
[01:34:41]  You know, is he going to is he going to sort of maybe is there any thought he'll go through with Francis with Francis's reforms?
[01:34:49]  Like, what do you make of all this?
[01:34:51]  Um, so Pope Leo spent a lot of time in Peru, where Opus Day is enormous.
[01:34:59]  I mean, like, there are presidential elections in Peru coming up next year.
[01:35:04]  And one of the leading candidates for that in that election to be president of the country is an Opus Day numero, like one of these guys that lives in the lodge, kind of whips himself, sillis.
[01:35:14]  So that kind of gives you some idea as to just how extended this organization is in Peru.
[01:35:20]  So when, you know, when he was made bishop of this city called Ticolayo in northern Peru, you know, it's a real hotbed of Opus Day people.
[01:35:30]  And so, and once a year, traditionally around the world, they hold these masses for the Opus Day founder on the, you know, on the anniversary of his death, June 26th.
[01:35:42]  And yes, a picture has emerged of the new Pope presiding over a mass dedicated to Escriva in Chiculayo.
[01:35:51]  And I mean, and also actually another video has since emerged of him giving an entire homily where he talks in quite positive terms about the Opus Day founder, which I guess on the face of it is kind of disturbing.
[01:36:07]  And you're like, what the hell?
[01:36:09]  I thought we thought this guy was progressive and he like hated JD Vance and the rest of it.
[01:36:15]  What's going on?
[01:36:17]  I mean, I think context is everything.
[01:36:21]  He was the bishop of a diocese that had a lot of Opus Day members.
[01:36:28]  And I think it was probably diplomatic of him to say, sure, you can have a mass dedicated to this guy who, after all, is a saint in the Catholic Church.
[01:36:39]  And as bishop, it's no surprise that he might preside over that mass and might say a few nice words about, it doesn't mean he's like a fully signed up, like, you know, big, you know, fanboy of Esquivar.
[01:36:57]  And also, we have to bear in mind the timing.
[01:37:00]  So the photos, I think, date from 2019 or 2020.
[01:37:04]  The video I've seen is from 2022.
[01:37:07]  But that was just before these big complaints landed on Pope Francis' desk, alleging all kinds of abuses within Opus Day.
[01:37:19]  So I think Pope Leo at the time, when he was bishop prevost, I think, was probably doing something that he thought was, he was, it was an act of outreach to the Opus Day members within his church.
[01:37:35]  I think he was probably very much unaware of the abuses of Opus Day at that stage.
[01:37:40]  And so I think it's difficult to read into anything.
[01:37:42]  I think, but without a doubt, I mean, the one big piece of unfinished business from Francis, I mean, we were saying before, you know, when Francis died, he was literally on the cusp of signing these reforms into law.
[01:37:57]  Opus Day has tried to like kind of cancel them and kind of move on.
[01:38:02]  I think the first major test of the new Pope will be what he does with whether he basically takes those reforms and forces Opus Day to kind of do them anyway, even though Francis has died, whether he may even choose to go further than Francis.
[01:38:18]  I mean, maybe Francis was held up as progressive, but he had a mixed record.
[01:38:24]  He didn't always go as far or as quickly as maybe he should have done on some issues.
[01:38:29]  And so I think, especially abuse, abuse is one of them.
[01:38:32]  I think so maybe the new Pope will choose to go even further and may even close Opus Day down.
[01:38:38]  Or maybe he'll decide that actually, well, some of the Opus Day guys I knew him back in Peru seem to be okay.
[01:38:45]  So maybe they must be fine.
[01:38:47]  These are all completely unanswered questions.
[01:38:51]  We just do not know.
[01:38:52]  And so whatever, it would all be speculation.
[01:38:55]  But I and many people will be watching how he treats Opus Day and what he does.
[01:39:03]  It's all on record now that, you know, we all know what they've been doing for many years.
[01:39:12]  We know the way they treat their members, the way they groom kids, the way they've been drugging kind of, you know, many of their elite members to hide their mental illnesses.
[01:39:22]  You know, all of this is kind of like, it's in my book.
[01:39:25]  It's in many, many newspaper reports out there.
[01:39:28]  There are many testimonies.
[01:39:30]  And so it's indisputable, you know, that this organization needs to be addressed and reined in or potentially closed down.
[01:39:39]  And what he does will be quite telling, I think.
[01:39:43]  Well, the book is so great.
[01:39:45]  There's so much more in the book that we can't even get into.
[01:39:48]  I mean, just like financial flows and influence networks and so many horrible abuses.
[01:39:55]  It's kind of difficult to count.
[01:39:57]  I feel like our listeners would really, really love the book.
[01:39:59]  We'll link to it in our show notes so they can they can click to buy.
[01:40:03]  It's called Opus, The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church.
[01:40:11]  And what a better time to read it now.
[01:40:13]  I mean, there is no better time.
[01:40:15]  Well, thank you guys for that relative confidence.
[01:40:17]  And yeah, thanks for having me on.
[01:40:19]  It's been a pleasure to talk about you.
[01:40:20]  Sorry, it's been a pleasure to talk with you even.
[01:40:23]  No, no, no, no, my brother.
[01:40:24]  It is about me.
[01:40:26]  I am in Opus Day.
[01:40:28]  Actually, yes, we've been talking about your conversion.
[01:40:30]  So yes.
[01:40:30]  My conversion.
[01:40:32]  You know, I was pleasantly surprised that around the Heritage Foundation, we did see a little bit of Jewish Opus Day connection there because it gave me hope for my own future within the organization.
[01:40:41]  Because I did realize halfway through the book that they are Catholic.
[01:40:44]  And I was like, that made me, I was like, this might be tough for me to join.
[01:40:48]  But I'm still in the process.

=== Opus Day Conversion (01:17) ===

[01:40:50]  Gareth, again, there's so much we haven't talked.
[01:40:53]  I mean, we can't, we didn't, you mentioned the drugging.
[01:40:55]  We didn't even talk about the drugging stuff.
[01:40:57]  Their involvement in certain Vatican banking scandals in South America.
[01:41:03]  I mean, there is so much to Opus Day.
[01:41:05]  And yeah, I recommend this book.
[01:41:09]  I wouldn't say it was a fun read, but it was definitely a read that I enjoy.
[01:41:14]  Well, it's an interesting book.
[01:41:16]  I don't know.
[01:41:17]  Because if I say it's a fun read, it sounds like I think the stuff in the book is fun.
[01:41:20]  But it's a good book and I recommend it.
[01:41:22]  And thank you so much for coming on.
[01:41:24]  Thank you for having me, guys.
[01:41:25]  It's been a pleasure.
[01:41:35]  Can you do your chant again?
[01:41:38]  Ave Maria Opus Day, JD Vanche, Catholic, Catholic.
[01:41:51]  It's crazy because Catholic doesn't sound that fucking Latin of a word, you know what I mean?
[01:41:54]  It'd be like Catholike.
[01:41:57]  That sounds nicer.
[01:41:58]  Catholic.
[01:42:00]  Let's wrap this up.
[01:42:01]  Yeah, let's get this.
[01:42:02]  Let's get this done.
[01:42:02]  My name is Bryce.
[01:42:03]  I'm Liz.
[01:42:04]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[01:42:06]  And this has been Trunan.
[01:42:07]  We'll see you next time.