Opus Dei. Some see it as a cult comprised of albino monks; others see it as a divine path to righteousness. Yet how do the media portray this Catholic organisation that is experiencing a surge of interest in its activities? Siyabonga Africa questions the relationship between the media and “The Work”, as the organisation is also known.

It might have been an unintended spin-off from the hype around the mega-bestseller The Da Vinci Code. Whether intended or not, the spotlight on a mysterious Catholic organisation called Opus Dei has created another hype. Who are they? What are they? And will we ever know the truth?
At a conference of Opus Dei – the literal meaning is “Work of God” – in late April 2001, over 100 public relations specialists working for the Catholic Church heard that their first rule should be: “Never, never, never tell a lie.” This came from Joaquin Navarro-Valis, the spokesperson for the late Pope John Paul II.
On the other side of the divide is the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN), an organisation that warns people about The Work. And their credo sounds quite similar to that of Navarro-Valis. It is a quotation from the Bible: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
Whose truth then should one believe? Which role has the media played in spreading either lies or the truth? And if the media has the public’s best interest at heart, then who should one believe?

According to its website ODAN is an organisation that was founded in 1991 to meet the growing demand for accurate information about Opus Dei. It was founded by Tammy Di Nicola who was a member of Opus Dei for two years. She has made it her personal mission to provide support for those who have had a painful experience as a result of their association with Opus Dei. ODAN relays its information to the media.
Günther Simmermacher is the editor of South Africa’s only Catholic newspaper, The Southern Cross. He says it distributes 11 000 copies per month. One would think that Simmermacher has a clear stance on the matter – but during an afternoon interview in downtown Cape Town it’s not clear what his own views are. On the one hand he wouldn’t work for Opus Dei, “not even as a cleaner”; on the other he commends the good work that they do, especially the manner in which they handled the hype surrounding The Da Vinci Code.

In a nutshell, Opus Dei is not a separate church from the Catholic Church. According to the Opus Dei website it’s a personal prelature of the Pope. What this means is that regional missions answer to the bishops of the countries they operate in. As a whole, Opus Dei is accountable only to the Pope. Andrew Woghiren, a spokesperson for Opus Dei based in Johannesburg, concurs by saying that Opus Dei is just another organisation within the grand hierarchy of the church. He says Opus Dei seeks to sanctify daily life by devoting everything done to God.
This doctrine has been expounded in a detailed book about The Work by American journalist John Allen. He has been working within the Catholic Church and has written for Newsweek and Time. According to Allen’s book, Opus Dei: Secrets and Power inside the Catholic Church, the sanctification of daily life is what St.
Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of The Work, saw as God’s wish. This became the doctrine of Opus Dei and all its
members, whether they are numaries or supernumeraries. Numaries are members who live within Opus Dei missions and supernumeraries are those who live outside and are allowed to marry. Woghiren describes himself as a numary, even though he lives like a supernumerary.

According to ODAN, one of the “main tricks” that Opus Dei employs is using supernumeraries to answer the media’s questions because the supernumeraries themselves have no idea of the inner workings of the Opus Dei.
They are merely members who practise the teachings of The Work in their daily lives. Hence any secrets of Opus Dei would not be divulged to the media by supernumeraries. This is an example of Opus Dei’s secretive nature.
This adds to the ordinary citizen’s dilemma: can The Work be trusted? Simmermacher says, “It’s Opus Dei, it is right to be suspicious.”
He states the various cases of suspicion against Opus Dei: from Robert Hanssen, the ex-CIA agent and Opus Dei supernumerary who leaked US government information to the Soviet Union; through to St Josemaría Escrivá’s relationship with General Francisco Franco, the leader of the Nationalist Party during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

Thirty years after his death in 1975, Escrivá’s organisation is now fictionalised in a book that makes the presumption that Opus Dei deals in espionage, murder and conspiracy. Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, focused on the aspects of The Work that give it its notoriety: secrecy and self-mortification.
Opus Dei published a paper called “Three years with The Da Vinci Code” that chronicled its media response to the book. The Work’s media relations department, based in New York, states on its website that it only found out three weeks before that the book was to be published.
By then The Work’s machinery had kicked in: its media department chose to formulate a media plan to address the mania – Simmermacher admires Opus Dei for this. It seems the plan was to initially ignore the book. They would claim that it was a work of fiction and had no basis on reality. Yet by 2004, the book was being made into a film and something had to be done.
According to The Work’s media department’s website, “Operation Lemonade” was conceived to address the release of the movie and the subsequent media backlash. Members of the media department met during December 2004 to draw up the two phase plan.
Opus Dei firstly attempted to negotiate with the film’s production company, Sony Pictures, in order to have the movie’s referral to Opus Dei labelled
fictitious. When Sony refused to meet with The Work, the second stage of the plan was initiated.
The second phase began at the end of 2005. In this part of the plan Opus Dei engaged the public directly to refute the negative image that resulted from the book and film. The organisation took advantage of the media hype and interest in The Work to present its view through the now available channels of communication.

ODAN states on its website that “Operation Lemonade” was a light-hearted name that masked the controlled environment that exists within The Work. They believe that Opus Dei used the Church to piggyback their cause by stating that the book and film was an attack on the history of the Church and Christianity.
Opus Dei was thus able to hide behind these institutions whilst fighting the book and movie. According to ODAN, Opus Dei chose to focus on the extremes of the film and book, namely corporal mortification and the existence of monks, and used these to mask the real problems within The Work.

Retired British academic Philip Knight describes The Da Vinci Code, in a paper he presented to senior members of the Church at the
Vatican in 2005, as “an unparalleled phenomenon”. Some religious critics in The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice have tried to dismiss it as a “glamorous story” that taps into society’s “need to undermine historical Christianity”.
Yet Opus Dei’s best move, according to Simmermacher, was to engage the movie and book in the positive manner that it did. By
engaging the media and inviting them to their centres, Opus Dei created an image that it was more open than what The Da Vinci Code proposed. Time reported in 2006 that membership for The Work has increased after the release of The Da Vinci Code. Simmermacher even says that Opus Dei ended up thanking Dan Brown for the hype – and maybe indirectly, a more positive image. Woghiren says that as small as the mission is in South Africa, there was a significant increase in membership and interest in The Work. This was evident judging by the number of requests for interviews from radio stations such as Talk Radio 702 and several newspapers.

Woghiren appreciates this newfound contact with the media because in the past “the media did not always contact us directly, but went to their old files”. It is this reliance on old information coupled with the fact that journalists have short deadlines that Woghiren attributes to the negative image of Opus Dei.

Woghiren describes ODAN as “a very small website run by a few people making a lot of noise”. They are, he believes, “of little concern”. He states that the relationship with ODAN is like that of a married couple after a divorce: when people leave, some “get over it and move on” and others take a long time to come to terms with it. This is why, he says, Opus Dei tries to treat ODAN with “affection” because The Work is about being good Christians.

It is no lie that members of The Work are covertly secretive or hostile. Simmermacher points out that his paper has had no bad experiences with The Work. And for what it is worth, the fact that The Work chose to engage with the media about the book and
movie counts as a point on their side. According to Simmermacher they didn’t hide, as most Catholic dioceses did, when scandals of child molestation surfaced. Yet as the old, clichéd saying goes: where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The fact that “counter-organisations” such as ODAN exist is an indication that there is a level of mystery and deception somewhere in the structure of The Work. Opus Dei might have done a good job stifling that image, even benefiting from it in the increased numbers of members worldwide.
And the mass media may have even benefited from this newfound engagement with The Work. What is safe to say is that the two are on speaking terms, for now. And maybe it’s a fad, and it might not last. SMF