The Dei today: Peter Stanford interviews Opus Dei's Jack Valero

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Belfast Telegraph

The Dei today
It wields huge influence in the Vatican yet is condemned as a sinister and ruthless Catholic sect. Now the fundamentalist group is taking control of a British parish for the first time - and one of its members is in the Cabinet. Peter Stanford gains rare access to the closed world of Opus Dei
17 January 2005

Snip:

He is a polished PR man. Before dedicating himself full-time to Opus Dei, he ran a successful computer company. He insists that all the mistakes of the past are now history, that Opus Dei has changed, but the opportunism certainly remains. So, for instance, when the Da Vinci Code trippers turn up outside, they are now invited in for tea. Officially it is to dispel the caricature of Opus Dei produced by Dan Brown - the courts might have been a more effective route - but you cannot help but see the potential for a bit of fishing in such apparently casual encounters.

...

Only twice during our conversation does he avert his gaze. The first comes when we get on to the founder. Some who knew him say that he was a fraud who lied about everything from his real name to the extent of the Holocaust. His diaries, they say, were written with a view to presenting himself as saintly when the reality was that his actual interest in life was power and advancement in the church, a process completed by his followers after his death when they spent a lot of money on fast-tracking his cause for canonisation in record time.

"Nothing makes me angry any more," Valero says, staring out of the window, "but this thing about the Holocaust still does. It is all based on the account of one man. I don't know of anyone else who heard the founder say such things. It is a lie." The one man, it should be pointed out, is an ex-Opus Dei member who left and is now a senior priest in Westminster diocese. And one reason why the charge has stuck down the years is the context of Escriva's life and work. Opus Dei rose to prominence first in Spain under Franco's Fascist regime. Several ministers were closely linked with it.

Later I ask Valero about his own route into Opus Dei. His father was a member, he says, and at 15 he visited Rome and heard Escriva speak. It made such a powerful impression on him that at 18 he joined. He is not a priest, but has taken a vow of celibacy. Why, I ask. Again he is staring out of the window. "Because it leaves me free to travel where I am needed." But couldn't you do that with a family? "Not at short notice."
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=601597

Peter Stanford was editor of 'The Catholic Herald' from 1988 to 1992