Opus Dei Loses Its Crown Jewel

A tower made of red bricks stands in the middle of steep mountains overlooking an immense lake bathed in sunlight. Here is the setting of a Marian shrine more than a thousand years old, which houses the miraculous image of Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles.

Between 1960 and 1975, Fr. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei, decided to build a new shrine on the site of an old hermitage in order to promote devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and to provide a basis for the Work that he founded almost forty years earlier.

In 1962, an agreement was concluded with the bishopric of Barbastro which was forced to cede to Opus Dei, then in full expansion, the domain and custody of the image of the Virgin, with the bishopric’s rights over the sanctuary being retained and remaining safe, in theory.

The years passed, the influence of the Work continued to grow until it occupied a dominating place under the pontificate of Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) and no one any longer dared to contest the status of Torreciudad which at that time was similar to that of an oratory of the prelature which appoints its rector as it sees fit.

But since the election of the Pope from Argentina, water has flowed through the Tiber, the Work has lost its influence and its splendor. As nature abhors a vacuum, the bishopric of Barbastro now intends to recover all its rights. In a note written on July 17, 2023, Perez Pueyo, ordinary of the diocese, declared that he wants to “regularize the canonical situation of the shrine” and be the one to appoint the new rector, who will no longer be a priest of the institute founded by Msgr. Escriva.

It was a decision immediately contested by Opus Dei before the courts of the Holy See, but which, according to the bishop, was taken “in accordance with the law, in ecclesial communion and in complete transparency.” Bishop Pueyo explains: “We are open to the competent ecclesiastical authority resolving the situation if the Opus is not really satisfied with the arguments put forward.” He made the assurance that he has “proceeded with honesty, transparency, courage, and an evangelical spirit.”

It is a diocesan “awakening” which comes just a few weeks after the Sovereign Pontiff decided to resize – to put it mildly – Opus Dei’s place in the Church. Since the Pope made his decision, the Work has lost part of what made it unique. Only religious people are now full members, with the laity becoming more associates than full members.

It is a reform, not to say an upheaval, which redistributes the cards, and reminds the work that the Tarpeian rock has not moved a centimeter from the Capitol in several millennia. The time has come to lay low: the former rector of Torreciudad, a member of Opus, even wanted to ask for forgiveness for his past statements in which he urged the bishop to “be better disposed, and try to rectify his position in order to reach an agreement” on the location of the sanctuary.

“Now, I regret, I have already presented my apology privately (to the bishop), and I wish you to know that, because I do not intend to do any harm or cause a disturbance, by harming anyone's reputation. I wish to be united with the bishop of the diocese in which I work and I hope that my apologies will be accepted,” underlines the priest, who has resigned himself to participating in the team led by Fr. Jose Mairal, the first diocesan priest not appointed by Opus Dei to the position of rector of Torreciudad.