Opus Dei rejects allegations of exploitation

The Catholic organisation Opus Dei ("Work of God") denies allegations that its deputy leader was involved in international trafficking in women. The Spanish internet portal "elDiario.es" reported on Wednesday that the priest Mariano Fazio had been part of a system that had exploited poor women as labourers in Argentina for at least four decades. There are said to have been at least 43 victims.

The internet portal refers to an eight-page document dated 11 June in which the Argentinian public prosecutor's office requested that Fazio be summoned for questioning along with four other Opus Dei members. According to "elDiario.es", the Argentinian Public Prosecutor's Office against Human Trafficking (PROTEX) and the National Prosecutor's Office for Federal Criminal and Penitentiary Matters had already filed formal charges against the highest officials of Opus Dei in Buenos Aires in 2024. The portal quotes a Bolivian woman who was recruited as a minor and worked for 31 years in Rome and Buenos Aires as a permanently available maid. She reports psychological subjugation and mental health problems that were treated with antidepressants and sleeping pills by psychiatrists close to Opus Dei.

"Freely chosen vocation"

As "elDiario.es" reported on Thursday, Opus Dei rejects the allegations of human trafficking and labour exploitation. The organisation writes that it is surprising "that the complaint initially began in the media as a complaint about discrepancies in social security and labour contributions". It then "mutated into a civil claim for damages" and finally, in August 2024, a person claimed to have been a victim of human trafficking.

The organisation explains that for this accusation, the "freely chosen vocation" of these women, who are referred to as "Auxiliary Numeraries", is "taken completely out of context". The Opus Dei term "numerary" is derived from the Spanish "Miembro numerario" (countable, ordinary member). According to the Statute of Opus Dei, the Auxiliary Numeraries (auxiliaries of the N.) "dedicate themselves mainly to manual work or domestic tasks, which they voluntarily assume as their own professional activity, at the headquarters of the centres of the Work". Without naming him, the Opus Dei press office stresses that it is necessary and important that Fazio and the other accused persons "exercise their right to defence and present their version of the facts for the first time in order to clarify the situation definitively".

Opus Dei was founded in 1928 by the Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer (1902-1975), who was later canonised, as a Catholic lay movement. Around 90,000 lay people and around 2,000 priests belong to the organisation worldwide. The members of Opus Dei are required to sanctify their lives through asceticism and physical mortification and to characterise society through a consistently Christian life. It has the most members in Spain. The members, of whom there are more women than men, are 74 per cent married; 26 per cent are celibate. There has been repeated criticism of Opus Dei's structure and image of humanity both inside and outside the church. The personal prelature submitted a new version of its statutes commissioned by Pope Francis in 2022 to the Vatican for review in mid-June. (KNA)