March 16, 2025 • 21 mins
We continue with Gareth Gore, author of: Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church. Opus Dei has worked behind the scenes for decades to build up political influence and power in the U.S., bankrolling many right-wing causes.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Could they be true?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
This is part two of our conversation with Gareth Gore.
Gareth is a financial journalist.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Who's written the book Opus, The.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Cult of Dark Money, human trafficking, and right wing conspiracy
inside the Catholic Church. He's been telling us about the
secretive Catholic sect known as Opus Day. I have a question,
so we all are perceiving this as a somewhat cult
like structure. I certainly felt it was a cult when
(00:59):
I was there. But usually a cult is got one
figurehead who's benefiting from it, or a family that's benefiting
from it. These founders are long since deead. Who are
the beneficiaries? Now, who's the head of this?
Speaker 4 (01:11):
I mean there is a head of Opa stay in
Rome who runs the entire thing. But like many cults,
there's a worship of the founder, so everything that the
founder said and wrote down is now taken as gospel.
But yes, I mean, in effect Escrevard, this priest who's
been dead since nineteen teventy five, in fact, he's still
(01:33):
in charge. I mean, there are all kinds of horrendous
and abusive practices that he wrote down, that he stipulated
in his writings, and I think the modern organization realizes
that many of these practices had no place in society
and in fact are really damaging to the reputation of
Opus Day globally. Because of this cult like worship of
(01:55):
the founder, they're unable to question anything he said or did.
And recently it was discovered that Opus Day has allegedly
been involved in the trafficking of young girls, from recruiting
these girls in places like Argentina and Nigeria the Philippines
and entrapping them in the organization as effectively unpaid servants
(02:16):
for the elite and the organization and federal prosecutors in
Argentina have recently formally accused the organization of engaging in
human trafficking and serious labor abuses, and there's going to
be trial this year or next with four Day Priests
standing trial. I think the organization realizes that those practices
have no place in today's society, but they're unable to
(02:39):
stop doing it because that's what the founders said should
be done. So to answer your question, he's dead, but
Escrivar is still in charge. His message of infiltrating society
at the very top is what drives Opus Day still
to this day.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
We've mentioned that Opus Day seems to have people in
senior positions in Washington been the right wing and the
Supreme Court, and Leonard Leo and Bill Bara in this
sort of thing. I think we're suggesting they may have
some undue influence in right wing politics, but also in
our politics. Evangelical Protestants seem to be unusually supportive of
(03:18):
the right wing in the United States. It would seem
that they would be natural not enemies, but competitors. Is
there something about Opus Day in that it's your private
relationship with God or something that makes it similar to
Evangelical Protestantism or what's the relationship there, if any?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Just before I answered that, I think I should be
clear as well. That.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
There's no implication in my book call in anything I'm
saying that this head of Opus Dane Realm that he
sat the issuing orders out to lended Leo or the
Supreme Court justices or whatever. That's not the way it works.
It's not that kind of conspiracy. The conspiracy is simply
to recruit from the elite to society and have the
(04:00):
people in positions of power so that we can push
forward this reactionary agenda and rip up any kind of
progressive advances. That's the conspiracy that these people not being
told specifically what to do. You need to devote this
way or you need to push this It's about creating
the right conditions. It's about creating a network and having
(04:20):
the right people rise up and to help each other
out to advance this cause. And now, to get back
to your question, from time to time they get into
bed with like minded groups and individuals who have nothing
to do with Opus Day and who have nothing to
do with even with the Catholic Church. At one stage
in the late two thousands, the kind of senior upper
(04:43):
stay members in the US were obsessed with the idea
of stopping same sex marriage from going into law. And
so Opus Stay basically teamed up with the Mormon Church
to push to get called proper Position eight onto the
ballot in California, which was a major step to slowing
(05:05):
down the rassification of same sex marriage. Ultimately, they failed,
and people in the US can now have same sex unions.
But yeah, I mean, you know, that's one example of
them teeming up with like minded groups which fall outside
of the natural comfort zone.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Did you grow up in the Catholic Church. I did.
I'm just wondering if you did. No, I didn't.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I was raised, as I guess, a Cultural Church of
England member. I went to a church and England school.
We said the Lord's Prayer every morning, and we prayed
and we sang hymns. But I don't think I really
believed in any of it.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
I did grow up Caretholic, not that Opah state, the Dominicans,
but within the Catholic Church are the elements of the
Catholic Church. We like to talk about Opus Stay right,
and we snicker about them.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
So this again goes back to the cult like worship
of the founder. So the founder I think was a
bit of an unstable individual, as many of these cult
leaders are his father had fallen into pankruptcy, if the
family had fallen on hard times, his father had died,
and he is the eldest son. It was all on
his shoulders to lift family back to the bud all
days and being rich and wealthy again. And so I
(06:12):
think he was carrying around quite a little burden and
he was struggling. But his way he over ate, the
way that he dealt with I think a lot of
his problems was to basically punish himself, to punish his body.
And this is something that people self mutilation is not
that far from self flagellation, which is what's happening here.
(06:32):
I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, and but my interpretation
is that this is the way that he dealt with
his problems. So he would do it in two ways,
and you mentioned one of them. The scyllis, which is
basically like a barbed wire that often usually you were
around around the thigh but couldn't be used to You
can wear it around other parts of the body as well,
and it's made up of these kind of like flaws
(06:52):
which dig into the skin. The idea is that it's
meant to be very uncomfortable. It's that breaks the skin, maybe,
but it's just it makes it uncomfortable to sit or
to do anything. And it's meant to remind you of
the suffering of Christ. So that the Founder was a
big wearer of the scillys. He would wear it four
hours on end, sometimes around his thigh, often around his waist,
(07:15):
which kind of goes back to his discomfort around his
weight and his issues around weight. But he also used
to use this other thing called the discipline, which is
a whip. Now, a normal discipline would be made of
kind of cord a rope, and maybe you'd have kind
of three lashes, and you'd take off your shirt and
you would hit yourself over the back and again the
(07:36):
idea is that it's to remind you of the suffering
of Christ. But for the Founder of ober Day that
wasn't enough. He pimped up his discipline so he would
add raizor blades to the rope, so that when he
whipped himself, he would cut into his back and those
around him were worried about his psychological state. His mother
(07:58):
and his priest even begged him to stop doing this.
The walls would be spattered with blood after he'd had
these sessions, but Escrevar made it compulsory for the numery members,
the celibate members of Opus Day, the kind of the
elite members of Opu's day, to continue this practice.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So many of.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
The teachers were at the school in the Heights where
John attended. Many of those teachers would have been numery
members celibate members of Opus Day, and they are still
to this day expected to do those two forms of
corporal multification. So then they're expected to work the sibis
for two hours a day you'd do in the afternoons,
(08:37):
and they're expected to whip themselves using the discipline, presumably
without the razor blades, for a period, usually on a
Saturday afternoon. That's still ongoing to this day. And those
are the kind of the elite members, the normal members,
the supernumeraries, the people that live out and the in
normal harms with kids or whatever. They've been couraged to
do these things too, but there's not the same level
(08:58):
of expectation or control to sure they do it. But yeah,
this is very much still alive and well within the organization.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Going to the conspiracy aspect of this show, the word
that is most commonly associated with Opus day is secretive?
Why be secretive? Why not be open about what you
believe and what you're trying to accomplish in this world
like other organizations are. Again, it always comes back to
the founder. He was a conspiracy theorist himself. He realized
(09:25):
that he was building this army and he saw it
as an army. He described it in his writings as
an army. He knew he was building this secret army
in a hostile environment, so it made sense to him
to keep it flanderstin Yeah. Like.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
He specifically told his members to not disclose their membership
to anyone else, to even their friends or family. He
was obsessed with the idea of we need to keep
this below the radar because there are enemies of Christ
add and as well as infiltrating the upper echelons of society.
He also tasked his followers with and I guess u
(10:01):
cia guys will enjoy this, but he tasked them specifically
with collecting information on the enemies of Christ. He saw
this as a battle and the open Staine membership it
was a gorilla army that would infiltrate society and use
their positions there to one push through the agenda, but
two also to collect information on the enemies out there
(10:21):
and people that might be that might stop them from
pushing through the throat. Yes, these documents were written in
the nineteen thirties. These documents are held up as like
tablets that Nausi's brought down from the mountain. This is
still the way the organization thinks about itself and about
its membership today in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Just hold on for a short break, can be right back.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
So no discussion of all this stay is complete without
at least touching Reverend Jan mccoskey, right, He was the
American sort of patron of Opus Day, bringing it into
the US, building it up, charismitic guy. He converted New
Gingrich and Larry Kudlow and Senator CM brown Beck and
(11:13):
a number of other people. A huge money raiser, and
in the end he ended up with charges of sexual exploitation.
I think a payout of a million dollars was made
to a number of young women. I wonder if you
could bring us through some of the charges of our
sexual assault, but of the charges against against mcclus key
(11:33):
and of Opus Day in general.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
You're absolutely rights and describing as sexual assault. So yes
in the early two thousands, he groped one of the
women who came to him for a spiritual direction and
Opusday member in fact, and she reported the issue to
Opus Day and they did nothing, and she threatened to sue.
(11:55):
And when she threatened to sue, Opus Day decided to
smuggle this out of the country. They basically sent him
off to England to live in the Olpah Stay Center
in London. Well, he couldn't be served with papers or
arrested or whatever. And there was a good reason for that,
and that was because m mccoskey had become the face
of Olpus Day in Washington, d C. And as you say,
(12:16):
he'd recruited vast numbers of the Conservative Republican elite to
OLPA Stay. He'd enticed all of these people into the
Olpah Stay network. People looked up to him. He was
frequently on places like Meet the Press. He was the
kind of the go to guy in central Washington. He
was confessor to all of these powerful people. The last
(12:38):
thing Olpus Day needed was for him to be embroiled
in this sex gangle, and so they shipped him off
to England. Meanwhile, they agreed pay off with this woman,
I guess got her to sign a non disclosure agreement.
They paid her almost a million dollars. The whole story
went away, although it was part of the agreement. He
was no longer allowed to be back in d C.
So he went off initially to Chicago, but then they
(12:59):
shipped him out said that Valley to recruit out there
in Silicon Valley. And this whole thing went away until
a few years later and the woman she'd understood as
part of the agreement with elpus Day that he would
no longer be allowed to go out and preach, and
he wouldn't be allowed to be alone with women, and
she discovered that he was being allowed to carry he
(13:20):
was carrying on doing that in his ministry, and so
she decided to basically go public and to expose what
had happened. So, yeah, are there influential people in other
places around the world.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Almost every word that elpas Day operates, it's managed to penetrate,
to a greater or lesser extent, the kind of elite
of society. Going back to the sixties and seventies. There
are all kinds of rumors that they were involved in
the coup in seventy five in Chile. They were kind
of part of the efforts to destabilize the Allende government
(13:56):
in the early seventies. There these days in places like Poland, Spain,
of course, they're extremely influential Hungary. I understand that they've
got pretty big influence there as well. Any places like
the Philippines. I think they over the years have really
managed again to penetrate the kind of the Filipino political elite.
(14:16):
One thing listeners should realize is that this is not
no ordinary organization. If you're interested in joining up, as
Dave you think you know, if you think it's a
great organization, you want to sign up, you can't just
go on to the website and punching your details and
get a membership card posted through to the post. It's
not possible to request membership. You have to be invited in.
(14:38):
So they decide who they want to be part of
the organization and they go after them. They caught them,
they groomed them, and they push them into into membership.
And again that tells you what you need to know.
This is it's not a club that's open to anyone.
It's a club specifically for or targeted individuals who are
(15:02):
in a position to shape society.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Guys, you're a financial investigator and journalists you talk about
others either conspiracy or conspiracy theories in the financial industry.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
As you guys will now, behind every kind of conspiracy,
you need money. And so banks throughout their history have
been at the forefront of making stuff happen around the world.
Whenever there's a coop or destabilization efforts or whatever they
might be around the world, the money's going to come
from somewhere. I mean, we were just talking before we
(15:32):
started recording about the whole BCCI scandal the late eighties
and early nineties, where people discovered that this bank had
been used to funnel money to the Taliban, to Pakistani's
into all over the place. There's a great book called
Billion Dollar Whale, which is about huge scandal in Malaysia
where billions were siphoned by this guy and some of
(15:53):
the money was used to finance the film The Wolf
of Wolf of Ball Street.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
So opuste a it he has goal? What are its
goals through the US?
Speaker 6 (16:02):
Because you know, we see Project twenty twenty five, which
has a huge amount of influence of opus day people
leading it and guiding it forward. So what would a
future US look like if OPUS day gets its way.
I don't think Opusta has any specific goals. Its goals
kind of shift and change according to whatever's happening. So
(16:22):
in the early nineteen thirties and Spain, for example, I
guess the goal would have been the elimination of the
Communists and the Masons and the Jews, and the kind
of the re establishment of the church's proper place in society,
big church great again, but also make conservative reading of
the Catholic faith great again. So I think these days,
obviously there's the kind of hot button issues like abortion
(16:45):
and same sex marriage and contraception and all that kind
of thing. But I think really the goal for Opu's
day is to have is what we were saying earlier,
is to have the right hind of people, our kind
of people in position of power making the right decisions,
the right moral Catholic decisions about these things. And so
(17:08):
there's no kind of policy agenda. It's about creating the
right conditions. It's about creating this network and feeding this
network with conservative Catholic doctrine, and then having those people
go out and make the right decisions for themselves based
on the reading of the Bible.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
I think that's the goal. Yeah, I think it's in
a good position to do that following the last election,
as you were saying. Kevin Roberts, the president of the
Heritage Foundation, the Architective Project twenty twenty five, this blueprint
for a second Trump administration. He's a regular at the
LP Stay Center in Central Washington. He gets his spiritual
(17:48):
guidance from an olden state priest, and you can be
rest assured that up state's pretty happy with most of
the agenda that he's going to be pushing. In the
last Trump administration, I think there were five members of
the cabinets who were closely allied to Opus Day. I
wouldn't be surprised to see a similar number, if not more,
in the second. In the second administration, you might assume, Okay,
(18:10):
they don't really believe in these particular policies.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
They're all in it for power. Half of the people
believe it, and half of the people are seeing it
as a train that can ride to power. But my
impression of the people that I was surrounded with was no,
they're doing this because they're true believers, and they specifically
see the world as either good or evil.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
I think if you listen to some of the speeches
given given by people like Leonard Leo and by Kevin Roberts,
it's very clear that they see this as as a war.
It's us versus them. It's not just a cultural war.
I mean, they see this as a religious war. It's
a war against atheism, it's a war against progressivism. They
(18:52):
truly believe they're on the right side of history and
that they're following the teachings of Christ. I think the
Pope might have something to say about it.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I think there are wide.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Sections of the Catholic Church, including some of its most
senior people, who recognize that Opus Day is a problem,
and that many of the practices in OPA stay things
like human trafficking, the targeting and grooming of children, the
way that it controls and manipulates its members, that these
are horrendous abuses that need that have no place inside
(19:24):
the church. So I've got great feedback from sections of
the church. Opus Day Opusta's reaction has been really interesting.
It's decided to normally when in this day and age,
or maybe in b ninety maybe maybe these days this
doesn't happen, but certainly in recent history, whenever an organization
was presented with horrendous scandal or abuse, the reaction is, oh,
(19:49):
my goodness, this is terrible. We're going to launch a
huge investigation. We're going to get to some of this,
we're going to ensure that this is all sorted at,
and we're going to absolutely going to get We'll get
the bottom of this. Opus Day's reaction to my book
and to the allegations I make in my book has
been to stick their finger and fingers in their ears
and go la.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
La la la la, la, la la lao.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
They just don't want to engage with the book in
any way. They have mounted this disinformation campaign. They've tried
to smear me and say basically, I'm a liar. I've
tricked them into all of these kind of things or
completely false. They've created this kind of alternative narrative that
the book is all about this one Spanish guy and
(20:33):
it's I'm besmirching his character and it's an assault on
this poor guy. That's not true. This is the next
bos A about toppers Day. You know, they basically don't
want to engage with the book because to engage with
the book, would involve them having to answer pretty serious questions,
and would involve them having to admit too decades of
(20:55):
use and manipulation, and would involve them having to admit
that many of these practices one going today as well.
Thank you guys for having me on.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Seipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
for iHeart podcasts.
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Could they be true?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
This is part two of our conversation with Gareth Gore.
Gareth is a financial journalist.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Who's written the book Opus, The.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Cult of Dark Money, human trafficking, and right wing conspiracy
inside the Catholic Church. He's been telling us about the
secretive Catholic sect known as Opus Day. I have a question,
so we all are perceiving this as a somewhat cult
like structure. I certainly felt it was a cult when
(00:59):
I was there. But usually a cult is got one
figurehead who's benefiting from it, or a family that's benefiting
from it. These founders are long since deead. Who are
the beneficiaries? Now, who's the head of this?
Speaker 4 (01:11):
I mean there is a head of Opa stay in
Rome who runs the entire thing. But like many cults,
there's a worship of the founder, so everything that the
founder said and wrote down is now taken as gospel.
But yes, I mean, in effect Escrevard, this priest who's
been dead since nineteen teventy five, in fact, he's still
(01:33):
in charge. I mean, there are all kinds of horrendous
and abusive practices that he wrote down, that he stipulated
in his writings, and I think the modern organization realizes
that many of these practices had no place in society
and in fact are really damaging to the reputation of
Opus Day globally. Because of this cult like worship of
(01:55):
the founder, they're unable to question anything he said or did.
And recently it was discovered that Opus Day has allegedly
been involved in the trafficking of young girls, from recruiting
these girls in places like Argentina and Nigeria the Philippines
and entrapping them in the organization as effectively unpaid servants
(02:16):
for the elite and the organization and federal prosecutors in
Argentina have recently formally accused the organization of engaging in
human trafficking and serious labor abuses, and there's going to
be trial this year or next with four Day Priests
standing trial. I think the organization realizes that those practices
have no place in today's society, but they're unable to
(02:39):
stop doing it because that's what the founders said should
be done. So to answer your question, he's dead, but
Escrivar is still in charge. His message of infiltrating society
at the very top is what drives Opus Day still
to this day.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
We've mentioned that Opus Day seems to have people in
senior positions in Washington been the right wing and the
Supreme Court, and Leonard Leo and Bill Bara in this
sort of thing. I think we're suggesting they may have
some undue influence in right wing politics, but also in
our politics. Evangelical Protestants seem to be unusually supportive of
(03:18):
the right wing in the United States. It would seem
that they would be natural not enemies, but competitors. Is
there something about Opus Day in that it's your private
relationship with God or something that makes it similar to
Evangelical Protestantism or what's the relationship there, if any?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Just before I answered that, I think I should be
clear as well. That.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
There's no implication in my book call in anything I'm
saying that this head of Opus Dane Realm that he
sat the issuing orders out to lended Leo or the
Supreme Court justices or whatever. That's not the way it works.
It's not that kind of conspiracy. The conspiracy is simply
to recruit from the elite to society and have the
(04:00):
people in positions of power so that we can push
forward this reactionary agenda and rip up any kind of
progressive advances. That's the conspiracy that these people not being
told specifically what to do. You need to devote this
way or you need to push this It's about creating
the right conditions. It's about creating a network and having
(04:20):
the right people rise up and to help each other
out to advance this cause. And now, to get back
to your question, from time to time they get into
bed with like minded groups and individuals who have nothing
to do with Opus Day and who have nothing to
do with even with the Catholic Church. At one stage
in the late two thousands, the kind of senior upper
(04:43):
stay members in the US were obsessed with the idea
of stopping same sex marriage from going into law. And
so Opus Stay basically teamed up with the Mormon Church
to push to get called proper Position eight onto the
ballot in California, which was a major step to slowing
(05:05):
down the rassification of same sex marriage. Ultimately, they failed,
and people in the US can now have same sex unions.
But yeah, I mean, you know, that's one example of
them teeming up with like minded groups which fall outside
of the natural comfort zone.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Did you grow up in the Catholic Church. I did.
I'm just wondering if you did. No, I didn't.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I was raised, as I guess, a Cultural Church of
England member. I went to a church and England school.
We said the Lord's Prayer every morning, and we prayed
and we sang hymns. But I don't think I really
believed in any of it.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
I did grow up Caretholic, not that Opah state, the Dominicans,
but within the Catholic Church are the elements of the
Catholic Church. We like to talk about Opus Stay right,
and we snicker about them.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
So this again goes back to the cult like worship
of the founder. So the founder I think was a
bit of an unstable individual, as many of these cult
leaders are his father had fallen into pankruptcy, if the
family had fallen on hard times, his father had died,
and he is the eldest son. It was all on
his shoulders to lift family back to the bud all
days and being rich and wealthy again. And so I
(06:12):
think he was carrying around quite a little burden and
he was struggling. But his way he over ate, the
way that he dealt with I think a lot of
his problems was to basically punish himself, to punish his body.
And this is something that people self mutilation is not
that far from self flagellation, which is what's happening here.
(06:32):
I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, and but my interpretation
is that this is the way that he dealt with
his problems. So he would do it in two ways,
and you mentioned one of them. The scyllis, which is
basically like a barbed wire that often usually you were
around around the thigh but couldn't be used to You
can wear it around other parts of the body as well,
and it's made up of these kind of like flaws
(06:52):
which dig into the skin. The idea is that it's
meant to be very uncomfortable. It's that breaks the skin, maybe,
but it's just it makes it uncomfortable to sit or
to do anything. And it's meant to remind you of
the suffering of Christ. So that the Founder was a
big wearer of the scillys. He would wear it four
hours on end, sometimes around his thigh, often around his waist,
(07:15):
which kind of goes back to his discomfort around his
weight and his issues around weight. But he also used
to use this other thing called the discipline, which is
a whip. Now, a normal discipline would be made of
kind of cord a rope, and maybe you'd have kind
of three lashes, and you'd take off your shirt and
you would hit yourself over the back and again the
(07:36):
idea is that it's to remind you of the suffering
of Christ. But for the Founder of ober Day that
wasn't enough. He pimped up his discipline so he would
add raizor blades to the rope, so that when he
whipped himself, he would cut into his back and those
around him were worried about his psychological state. His mother
(07:58):
and his priest even begged him to stop doing this.
The walls would be spattered with blood after he'd had
these sessions, but Escrevar made it compulsory for the numery members,
the celibate members of Opus Day, the kind of the
elite members of Opu's day, to continue this practice.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So many of.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
The teachers were at the school in the Heights where
John attended. Many of those teachers would have been numery
members celibate members of Opus Day, and they are still
to this day expected to do those two forms of
corporal multification. So then they're expected to work the sibis
for two hours a day you'd do in the afternoons,
(08:37):
and they're expected to whip themselves using the discipline, presumably
without the razor blades, for a period, usually on a
Saturday afternoon. That's still ongoing to this day. And those
are the kind of the elite members, the normal members,
the supernumeraries, the people that live out and the in
normal harms with kids or whatever. They've been couraged to
do these things too, but there's not the same level
(08:58):
of expectation or control to sure they do it. But yeah,
this is very much still alive and well within the organization.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Going to the conspiracy aspect of this show, the word
that is most commonly associated with Opus day is secretive?
Why be secretive? Why not be open about what you
believe and what you're trying to accomplish in this world
like other organizations are. Again, it always comes back to
the founder. He was a conspiracy theorist himself. He realized
(09:25):
that he was building this army and he saw it
as an army. He described it in his writings as
an army. He knew he was building this secret army
in a hostile environment, so it made sense to him
to keep it flanderstin Yeah. Like.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
He specifically told his members to not disclose their membership
to anyone else, to even their friends or family. He
was obsessed with the idea of we need to keep
this below the radar because there are enemies of Christ
add and as well as infiltrating the upper echelons of society.
He also tasked his followers with and I guess u
(10:01):
cia guys will enjoy this, but he tasked them specifically
with collecting information on the enemies of Christ. He saw
this as a battle and the open Staine membership it
was a gorilla army that would infiltrate society and use
their positions there to one push through the agenda, but
two also to collect information on the enemies out there
(10:21):
and people that might be that might stop them from
pushing through the throat. Yes, these documents were written in
the nineteen thirties. These documents are held up as like
tablets that Nausi's brought down from the mountain. This is
still the way the organization thinks about itself and about
its membership today in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Just hold on for a short break, can be right back.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
So no discussion of all this stay is complete without
at least touching Reverend Jan mccoskey, right, He was the
American sort of patron of Opus Day, bringing it into
the US, building it up, charismitic guy. He converted New
Gingrich and Larry Kudlow and Senator CM brown Beck and
(11:13):
a number of other people. A huge money raiser, and
in the end he ended up with charges of sexual exploitation.
I think a payout of a million dollars was made
to a number of young women. I wonder if you
could bring us through some of the charges of our
sexual assault, but of the charges against against mcclus key
(11:33):
and of Opus Day in general.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
You're absolutely rights and describing as sexual assault. So yes
in the early two thousands, he groped one of the
women who came to him for a spiritual direction and
Opusday member in fact, and she reported the issue to
Opus Day and they did nothing, and she threatened to sue.
(11:55):
And when she threatened to sue, Opus Day decided to
smuggle this out of the country. They basically sent him
off to England to live in the Olpah Stay Center
in London. Well, he couldn't be served with papers or
arrested or whatever. And there was a good reason for that,
and that was because m mccoskey had become the face
of Olpus Day in Washington, d C. And as you say,
(12:16):
he'd recruited vast numbers of the Conservative Republican elite to
OLPA Stay. He'd enticed all of these people into the
Olpah Stay network. People looked up to him. He was
frequently on places like Meet the Press. He was the
kind of the go to guy in central Washington. He
was confessor to all of these powerful people. The last
(12:38):
thing Olpus Day needed was for him to be embroiled
in this sex gangle, and so they shipped him off
to England. Meanwhile, they agreed pay off with this woman,
I guess got her to sign a non disclosure agreement.
They paid her almost a million dollars. The whole story
went away, although it was part of the agreement. He
was no longer allowed to be back in d C.
So he went off initially to Chicago, but then they
(12:59):
shipped him out said that Valley to recruit out there
in Silicon Valley. And this whole thing went away until
a few years later and the woman she'd understood as
part of the agreement with elpus Day that he would
no longer be allowed to go out and preach, and
he wouldn't be allowed to be alone with women, and
she discovered that he was being allowed to carry he
(13:20):
was carrying on doing that in his ministry, and so
she decided to basically go public and to expose what
had happened. So, yeah, are there influential people in other
places around the world.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Almost every word that elpas Day operates, it's managed to penetrate,
to a greater or lesser extent, the kind of elite
of society. Going back to the sixties and seventies. There
are all kinds of rumors that they were involved in
the coup in seventy five in Chile. They were kind
of part of the efforts to destabilize the Allende government
(13:56):
in the early seventies. There these days in places like Poland, Spain,
of course, they're extremely influential Hungary. I understand that they've
got pretty big influence there as well. Any places like
the Philippines. I think they over the years have really
managed again to penetrate the kind of the Filipino political elite.
(14:16):
One thing listeners should realize is that this is not
no ordinary organization. If you're interested in joining up, as
Dave you think you know, if you think it's a
great organization, you want to sign up, you can't just
go on to the website and punching your details and
get a membership card posted through to the post. It's
not possible to request membership. You have to be invited in.
(14:38):
So they decide who they want to be part of
the organization and they go after them. They caught them,
they groomed them, and they push them into into membership.
And again that tells you what you need to know.
This is it's not a club that's open to anyone.
It's a club specifically for or targeted individuals who are
(15:02):
in a position to shape society.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Guys, you're a financial investigator and journalists you talk about
others either conspiracy or conspiracy theories in the financial industry.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
As you guys will now, behind every kind of conspiracy,
you need money. And so banks throughout their history have
been at the forefront of making stuff happen around the world.
Whenever there's a coop or destabilization efforts or whatever they
might be around the world, the money's going to come
from somewhere. I mean, we were just talking before we
(15:32):
started recording about the whole BCCI scandal the late eighties
and early nineties, where people discovered that this bank had
been used to funnel money to the Taliban, to Pakistani's
into all over the place. There's a great book called
Billion Dollar Whale, which is about huge scandal in Malaysia
where billions were siphoned by this guy and some of
(15:53):
the money was used to finance the film The Wolf
of Wolf of Ball Street.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
So opuste a it he has goal? What are its
goals through the US?
Speaker 6 (16:02):
Because you know, we see Project twenty twenty five, which
has a huge amount of influence of opus day people
leading it and guiding it forward. So what would a
future US look like if OPUS day gets its way.
I don't think Opusta has any specific goals. Its goals
kind of shift and change according to whatever's happening. So
(16:22):
in the early nineteen thirties and Spain, for example, I
guess the goal would have been the elimination of the
Communists and the Masons and the Jews, and the kind
of the re establishment of the church's proper place in society,
big church great again, but also make conservative reading of
the Catholic faith great again. So I think these days,
obviously there's the kind of hot button issues like abortion
(16:45):
and same sex marriage and contraception and all that kind
of thing. But I think really the goal for Opu's
day is to have is what we were saying earlier,
is to have the right hind of people, our kind
of people in position of power making the right decisions,
the right moral Catholic decisions about these things. And so
(17:08):
there's no kind of policy agenda. It's about creating the
right conditions. It's about creating this network and feeding this
network with conservative Catholic doctrine, and then having those people
go out and make the right decisions for themselves based
on the reading of the Bible.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
I think that's the goal. Yeah, I think it's in
a good position to do that following the last election,
as you were saying. Kevin Roberts, the president of the
Heritage Foundation, the Architective Project twenty twenty five, this blueprint
for a second Trump administration. He's a regular at the
LP Stay Center in Central Washington. He gets his spiritual
(17:48):
guidance from an olden state priest, and you can be
rest assured that up state's pretty happy with most of
the agenda that he's going to be pushing. In the
last Trump administration, I think there were five members of
the cabinets who were closely allied to Opus Day. I
wouldn't be surprised to see a similar number, if not more,
in the second. In the second administration, you might assume, Okay,
(18:10):
they don't really believe in these particular policies.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
They're all in it for power. Half of the people
believe it, and half of the people are seeing it
as a train that can ride to power. But my
impression of the people that I was surrounded with was no,
they're doing this because they're true believers, and they specifically
see the world as either good or evil.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
I think if you listen to some of the speeches
given given by people like Leonard Leo and by Kevin Roberts,
it's very clear that they see this as as a war.
It's us versus them. It's not just a cultural war.
I mean, they see this as a religious war. It's
a war against atheism, it's a war against progressivism. They
(18:52):
truly believe they're on the right side of history and
that they're following the teachings of Christ. I think the
Pope might have something to say about it.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I think there are wide.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Sections of the Catholic Church, including some of its most
senior people, who recognize that Opus Day is a problem,
and that many of the practices in OPA stay things
like human trafficking, the targeting and grooming of children, the
way that it controls and manipulates its members, that these
are horrendous abuses that need that have no place inside
(19:24):
the church. So I've got great feedback from sections of
the church. Opus Day Opusta's reaction has been really interesting.
It's decided to normally when in this day and age,
or maybe in b ninety maybe maybe these days this
doesn't happen, but certainly in recent history, whenever an organization
was presented with horrendous scandal or abuse, the reaction is, oh,
(19:49):
my goodness, this is terrible. We're going to launch a
huge investigation. We're going to get to some of this,
we're going to ensure that this is all sorted at,
and we're going to absolutely going to get We'll get
the bottom of this. Opus Day's reaction to my book
and to the allegations I make in my book has
been to stick their finger and fingers in their ears
and go la.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
La la la la, la, la la lao.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
They just don't want to engage with the book in
any way. They have mounted this disinformation campaign. They've tried
to smear me and say basically, I'm a liar. I've
tricked them into all of these kind of things or
completely false. They've created this kind of alternative narrative that
the book is all about this one Spanish guy and
(20:33):
it's I'm besmirching his character and it's an assault on
this poor guy. That's not true. This is the next
bos A about toppers Day. You know, they basically don't
want to engage with the book because to engage with
the book, would involve them having to answer pretty serious questions,
and would involve them having to admit too decades of
(20:55):
use and manipulation, and would involve them having to admit
that many of these practices one going today as well.
Thank you guys for having me on.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Seipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
for iHeart podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
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