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The Pope grants sainthood to Opus Dei founder

Peter Popham
Monday 07 October 2002 00:00 BST
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Pope John Paul II elevated the Spanish priest Jose Maria Escriva to sainthood yesterday, watched by at least 300,000 of the priest's followers, who filled St Peter's Square and spilled into the surrounding streets and along the bank of the Tiber.

Yet there was no disorder, little confusion, and even the applause was polite. The crowd was so quiet for most of the two-hour ceremony that they might have been holding their breath.

It was surely one of the most decorous crowds ever to pack St Peter's Square. They arrived in suits and ties, twin-sets and pearls, Burberry capes, and the occasional dinner jacket, in in stark contrast with the country folk who packed the square a few months ago for the canonisation of the southern Italian priest Padre Pio.

Escriva became the 468th saint to have been created by the Pope during his 24 years in office, more than those created by his predecessors over the past four centuries put together. It was one of the fastest canonisations on record – Escriva died in 1975, and would have been 100 this year – and also one of the most controversial.

In 1928, he set up Opus Dei (OD), a religious organisation which now has more than 80,000 devotees, and members in senior Vatican positions, including the Pope's formidable press officer, Joaquin Navarro-Vallis. But despite their best efforts, criticism of Escriva and his legacy refuses to subside, as John Paul himself obliquely acknowledged.

Opus Dei became prominent during the Spanish Civil War, when Escriva became identified with General Franco. He remained influential in Spain until Franco's death, and OD provided many ministers for the government. But more than political skeletons, it is the quasi-masonic character of the organisation that gives its critics cause for concern.

Escriva's celebrated insight, as reiterated yesterday by the Pope, was that "the habitual life of a faithful Christian ... in every moment, is a life in which God is always present".

In the words of Mr Navarro-Vallis, "It is possible to fulfill God's will in the midst of everyday life." Escriva set up his organisation to galvanise the religious spirit among those immersed in the world of work, including doctors, businessmen and other professionals.

"Opus Dei," according to a Catholic source, "opened a new way for the faithful to sanctify themselves in the midst of the world through their work and fulfilment of their personal, family and social duties."

It was conceived as an organisation of men and women as dedicated to sanctity as priests and nuns – yet distinct from the traditional church. In 1982, John Paul II recognised this separate character of OD, making it the church's first and only "personal prelature" – a diocese with no geographic definition, and answerable directly to him. OD developed what its critics claim to be strongly cultish characteristics. Rigidly conservative in doctrine, the organisation is claimed to have become ruthless in courting likely recruits, fierce in its insistence on obedience, and extremely difficult to leave. "Holy coercion is necessary," Escriva wrote. "The Lord tells us 'compel them to come in'."

An editorial in Cronice, an OD magazine, states: "Go to the highways and byways and push those whom you find to come and fill his house. Force them to come in, push them."

Britain's late Cardinal Basil Hume made the only real dent in this policy when he obliged OD in Britain to stop recruiting children under 18 and to allow members outside spiritual guidance and to leave if they wished.

Escriva's charisma is undoubted. One British priest, who eventually left the organisation, said: "Impetuous, emotional, passionate, he counterbalanced these natural qualities with the abstract strength of ideals." Yesterday John Paul defended the man he has long admired, and whom he has now put among the saints.

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