BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentine prosecutors have concluded that there are grounds to launch a criminal investigation into Opus Dei’s highest authorities in South America between 1983 and 2015 for the crimes of human trafficking and labor exploitation against at least 44 women recruited by the religious order to perform domestic duties at home.
According to a document seen by The Associated Press, prosecutors have asked a federal judge to call to testify those who served as pastors or regional councilors of Opus Dei Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia during that period: Carlos Nannei (1991-1997), Patricio Olmos (1998-2014) and Víctor Urtizarrazu (2014-2022). They are also trying to question the regional secretary in charge of the order’s female branch, Gabriel Dondo, who held the position until 2015.
Opus Dei – Work of God in Latin – was founded in 1928 by the Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá and has 90,000 members in 70 countries. The lay group, much loved by Saint John Paul II, who canonized Escrivá in 2002, has a unique status in the church and reports directly to the pope. Most members are lay people, men and women with secular jobs and families who strive to “sanctify ordinary life.” Other members are priests or celibate laity.
Following a complaint filed in 2022, the team of prosecutors launched an investigation that concluded that from the early 1970s to 2015, “people holding various positions within Opus Dei had set up a structure dedicated to on recruiting at least 44 women, most of them girls and adolescents. to be subjected to living conditions comparable to servitude.”
Opus Dei in Argentina has denied the allegations.
“We categorically deny the accusations of human trafficking and labor exploitation,” the Office of the Prelature of Opus Dei in Argentina said in a statement, adding that to reinforce this accusation, “the training that some women in the group received and the vocation freely chosen by the numerical assistants of Opus Dei are completely taken out of context. This is a completely false accusation.”
Prosecutors allege that Opus Dei selected girls and adolescents from low-income families, mostly from rural areas far from the organization’s activity centers, and recruited them “with the promise of getting an education and improving their job prospects.”
“Once admitted, they were subjected to a regimen of ‘spiritual, professional and labor training’, and if they demonstrated a calling to be a numerical assistant, they were assigned for life to perform domestic duties in the centers of Opus Dei, both nationally and internationally. abroad,” they said.
The investigation focuses on four cases that fit the crime of human trafficking under current Argentine law.
Some complainants gave their testimony to AP in a story published in November 2021, in which they reported working under “manifestly illegal conditions,” including working without pay for 12 hours plus no breaks except for food or prayer, no registration in the social services. Security system and other violations of fundamental rights.
Their identities have been preserved in the prosecutors’ resolution.
Most women asked for dispensation, saying that the physical and psychological demands they were exposed to during their years of service became unbearable. They claim that they were left to fend for themselves, without money, and that many required psychological treatment after leaving Opus Dei.
A federal judge must now decide whether to grant prosecutors’ request to call the former pastors to testify.
Opus Dei Argentina reaffirmed its commitment to fully cooperate with the judiciary “to clarify the facts and resolve the situation in a fair and transparent manner.”
____