October 5, 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
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
John and I are on break now who are on
a secret mission, and this before all new Mission Implausible
episodes come out this fall. But for now, we'll bring
you one of our favorite past episodes and we'll soon
be launching our YouTube channel. See you there.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
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 3 (00:39):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
In war zones.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Could they be true?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
This is Mission Implausible.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
This is part two of our conversation with Gareth Gore.
Gareth is a financial journalist who's written the book Opus,
The 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
(01:22):
a question, so we all are perceiving this as a
somewhat cult like structure. I certainly felt it was a
cult when 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?
I mean there is a head of Opus stay in
(01:44):
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 seventy five, in fact, he's still
in charge. I mean, there are all kinds of horrendous
(02:07):
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's day globally. Because of this cold like worship of
the founder, they're unable to question anything he said or did.
(02:28):
And recently it was discovered that Olpus's day has allegedly
been involved in the trafficking of young girls. From recruiting
these girls in places like Argentina and Algeria, the Philippines
and entrapping them in the organization as effectively unpaid servants
for the elite and the organization and federal prosecutors in
(02:50):
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 OPS Day
priests standing trial. I think the organization realizes that those
practices have no place in today's society, but they're unable
to stop doing it because that's what the founders said
(03:13):
should be done. So to answer your question, he's dead,
but Scrivarre is still in charge. His message of infiltrating
society at the very top is what drives Opus Day
still to this day.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
We've mentioned that Opus Day seems to have people in
senior positions in Washington been the right wing in 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
(03:48):
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 5 (04:03):
Just before I answered that, I think I should be
clear as well that 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
Learned 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 of
(04:28):
society and have the right 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.
These people not being told specifically what to do. You
need to vote this way, or you need to push
this It's about creating the right conditions. It's about creating
(04:49):
a network and having 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
(05:11):
of senior Upper Stay members in the US obsessed with
the idea of stopping same sex marriage from going into law,
and so OPA Stay basically teamed up with the Mormon
Church to push to get the called Proposition eight onto
the ballot in California, which was a major step to
(05:34):
slowing down the ratification 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 3 (05:51):
Good did you grow up in the Catholic Church.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
I did.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I'm just wondering if you did.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
No, I didn't. 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 of it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
I did grow up Caretholic, not that oh PA state
the Dominicans, but within the Catholic Church are the elements
of the Catholic Church. We like to talk about this day, right,
and we snicker about them.
Speaker 5 (06:19):
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 bankruptcy, 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 buddh all
days and being rich and wealthy again. And so I
(06:42):
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 the things 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.
(07:02):
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 into two ways.
And you mentioned one of them, the scyllis, which is
basically like a barbed wire. 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 claws
(07:22):
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 at four
hours on end, sometimes around his thigh, often around his waist,
(07:44):
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 or 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
(08:06):
idea is that it's to remind you of the suffering
of Christ. But for it's the Founder of OBErs Day,
that wasn't enough. He pimped up his discipline so he
would add razor 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
(08:27):
mother 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 OPA's day, to continue this practice. So
many of the teachers were at the school in the
(08:50):
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 wor
the sybis for two hours a day, you're in the afternoons,
and they're expected to whip themselves using the discipline, presumably
(09:11):
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 supernomeries, the people that live out in the innormal
homes with kids or whatever. They've been couraged to do.
These things too, but there's not the same level of
expectation or control to ensure they do it. But yeah,
(09:31):
this is very much still alive and well within the organization.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
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.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Again, it always comes back to the founder. He was
a conspiracy theorist himself. He realized 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 he specifically told his members to not disclose their
(10:14):
membership to anyone else, to even their 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 cia guys will enjoy this but he tasked
them specifically with collecting information on the enemies of Christ.
(10:38):
He saw this as a battle and the open stain 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 and people that might be that might stop them
from pushing through this throat. Yes, these documents were written
in the nineteen thirties. These documents are held up as
(11:00):
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 2 (11:11):
Just hold on for a short break can be read back.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
So Gith, no discussion of Opustay is complete without at
least touching on Reverend John McCluskey, 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 Sam brown Beck and
(11:43):
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 sexual assault,
but of the charges against against McCluskey and OPUS Day
(12:04):
in general, you're absolutely.
Speaker 5 (12:05):
Watch and describing as sexual assault.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
So yes, in.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
The early two thousands, he groped one of the women
who came to him for the spirituals and olpusta member
in fact, and she reported the issue to OPU Stay
and they did nothing, and she threatened to sue. And
when she threatened to sue, Opus Stay decided to smuggle
(12:29):
this guy out of the country. They basically sent him
off to England to live in the OLPAH Stay Center
in London where he couldn't be served with papers or
arrested or whatever. And there was a good reason for that,
and that was because mc mccoskey had become the face
of OLPUS Day in Washington, d C. And as you say,
he'd recruited vast numbers of the Conservative Republican elite to
(12:53):
OPA 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
thing Olpasta needed was for him to be embroiled in
this sex gangle, and so they shipped him off to England. Meanwhile,
(13:14):
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 DC, so he went off
initially to Chicago, but then they shipped him out to
Silicon Valley to recruit out there in Silicon Valley. And
this whole thing went away until a few years later
(13:37):
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 was carrying on doing
that in his ministry, and so she decided to basically
go public and to expose what had happened. So, yeah,
(13:59):
are there influential people in other places around the world. Oh, absolutely, absolutely,
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 WHO in seventy five in Chile. They were kind
(14:20):
of part of the efforts to destabilize the Allende government
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
(14:41):
managed again to penetrate the kind of the Filipino political elite.
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 the post. It's not
(15:03):
possible to request membership. You have to be invited in
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 pushed them into membership. And
again that tells you what you need to know. This
(15:24):
is it's not a club that's open to anyone. It's
a club specifically for targeted individuals who are in a
position to shape society.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Guys, you're a financial investigator and journalists, you talk about
others either conspiracy or conspiracy theories in the financial industry.
Speaker 5 (15:42):
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
(16:02):
started recording about whole BCCI scandal the late eighties, knowing
nineties what people discovered that this bank had been used
to funnel money to the Taliban, to pakistanis into all
over the place. There's a great book called Billion Dollar Whale,
which is about a huge scandal in Malaysia where billions
were siphoned by this guy and some of the money
(16:23):
was used to finance the film The Wolf of Wall
for Ball three.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
So opusta a it he has goals? What are its
goals through the US? Because you know, we see Project
twenty twenty five which has a huge amount of influence
of opus Sta people leading it and guiding it forward.
So what would a future US look like if opus
Stay gets its way.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
I don't think Opista has any specific goals. Its goals
kind of shift and change according to whatever's happening. So
in the early nineteen thirties in 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.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Nick Church great again, but also make.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
Conservative reading of the Catholic faith great again. So I
think these days, obviously there's the kind of hot button
issues like abortion and same sex marriage and contraception and
all that kind of thing. But I think really the
goal for opus day is to have is what we
were saying Earlieres, is to have the right hinder people,
(17:27):
our kind of people in positions of power making the
right decisions, the right moral Catholic decisions about these things,
and so 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
(17:50):
those people go out and make the right decisions for
themselves based on the reading of the Bible. 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
(18:10):
second Trump administration. He's a regular at the OLPA Stay
Center in Central Washington. He gets his spiritual guidance from
an open state priest, and you can be rest assured
that OPU Stay'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 OPA Stay. I wouldn't be surprised
(18:33):
to see a similar number, if not more, in the second.
In the second administration, you might assume, Okay, they don't
really believe in these particular policies.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
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 3 (18:59):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
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 they see this as a religious war.
It's a war against atheism, it's a war against progressivism.
(19:21):
They 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 4 (19:29):
I think there are wide.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
Sections of the Catholic Church, including some of its most
senior people, who recognize that OPUS Stay 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
(19:54):
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 nine, maybe these days this doesn't happen,
but certainly in recent history, whenever an organization was presented
(20:15):
with horrendous scandal or abuse, the reaction is, oh, my goodness,
this is terrible. We're going to launch a huge investigation.
We're going to get to the bottom of this. We're
going to ensure that this is all sorted at, and
we're gonna absolutely going to get We'll get to the
bottom of this. Opus Day's reaction to my book and
to the allegations I make in my book has been
(20:36):
to stick the finger and fingers in their ears and
go la la.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
La la, la, la, la la lao.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
They just don't want to engage with the book in
any way. They have monted 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, all
completely false. They've created this kind of alternative narrative that
the book is all about this one Spanish guy and
(21:03):
it's I'm besmirching his character and it's an assault on
this poor guy that's not true. This is then exposed
a about topper s 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 to decades
(21:24):
of use and manipulation, and would involve them having to
admit that many of these practices are ongoing today as well.
Thank you guys having me on.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures
for iHeart Podcasts.
John and I are on break now who are on
a secret mission, and this before all new Mission Implausible
episodes come out this fall. But for now, we'll bring
you one of our favorite past episodes and we'll soon
be launching our YouTube channel. See you there.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
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 3 (00:39):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
In war zones.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Could they be true?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
This is Mission Implausible.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
This is part two of our conversation with Gareth Gore.
Gareth is a financial journalist who's written the book Opus,
The 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
(01:22):
a question, so we all are perceiving this as a
somewhat cult like structure. I certainly felt it was a
cult when 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?
I mean there is a head of Opus stay in
(01:44):
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 seventy five, in fact, he's still
in charge. I mean, there are all kinds of horrendous
(02:07):
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's day globally. Because of this cold like worship of
the founder, they're unable to question anything he said or did.
(02:28):
And recently it was discovered that Olpus's day has allegedly
been involved in the trafficking of young girls. From recruiting
these girls in places like Argentina and Algeria, the Philippines
and entrapping them in the organization as effectively unpaid servants
for the elite and the organization and federal prosecutors in
(02:50):
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 OPS Day
priests standing trial. I think the organization realizes that those
practices have no place in today's society, but they're unable
to stop doing it because that's what the founders said
(03:13):
should be done. So to answer your question, he's dead,
but Scrivarre is still in charge. His message of infiltrating
society at the very top is what drives Opus Day
still to this day.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
We've mentioned that Opus Day seems to have people in
senior positions in Washington been the right wing in 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
(03:48):
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 5 (04:03):
Just before I answered that, I think I should be
clear as well that 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
Learned 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 of
(04:28):
society and have the right 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.
These people not being told specifically what to do. You
need to vote this way, or you need to push
this It's about creating the right conditions. It's about creating
(04:49):
a network and having 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
(05:11):
of senior Upper Stay members in the US obsessed with
the idea of stopping same sex marriage from going into law,
and so OPA Stay basically teamed up with the Mormon
Church to push to get the called Proposition eight onto
the ballot in California, which was a major step to
(05:34):
slowing down the ratification 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 3 (05:51):
Good did you grow up in the Catholic Church.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
I did.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I'm just wondering if you did.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
No, I didn't. 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 of it.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
I did grow up Caretholic, not that oh PA state
the Dominicans, but within the Catholic Church are the elements
of the Catholic Church. We like to talk about this day, right,
and we snicker about them.
Speaker 5 (06:19):
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 bankruptcy, 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 buddh all
days and being rich and wealthy again. And so I
(06:42):
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 the things 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.
(07:02):
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 into two ways.
And you mentioned one of them, the scyllis, which is
basically like a barbed wire. 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 claws
(07:22):
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 at four
hours on end, sometimes around his thigh, often around his waist,
(07:44):
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 or 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
(08:06):
idea is that it's to remind you of the suffering
of Christ. But for it's the Founder of OBErs Day,
that wasn't enough. He pimped up his discipline so he
would add razor 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
(08:27):
mother 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 OPA's day, to continue this practice. So
many of the teachers were at the school in the
(08:50):
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 wor
the sybis for two hours a day, you're in the afternoons,
and they're expected to whip themselves using the discipline, presumably
(09:11):
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 supernomeries, the people that live out in the innormal
homes with kids or whatever. They've been couraged to do.
These things too, but there's not the same level of
expectation or control to ensure they do it. But yeah,
(09:31):
this is very much still alive and well within the organization.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
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.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Again, it always comes back to the founder. He was
a conspiracy theorist himself. He realized 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 he specifically told his members to not disclose their
(10:14):
membership to anyone else, to even their 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 cia guys will enjoy this but he tasked
them specifically with collecting information on the enemies of Christ.
(10:38):
He saw this as a battle and the open stain 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 and people that might be that might stop them
from pushing through this throat. Yes, these documents were written
in the nineteen thirties. These documents are held up as
(11:00):
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 2 (11:11):
Just hold on for a short break can be read back.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
So Gith, no discussion of Opustay is complete without at
least touching on Reverend John McCluskey, 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 Sam brown Beck and
(11:43):
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 sexual assault,
but of the charges against against McCluskey and OPUS Day
(12:04):
in general, you're absolutely.
Speaker 5 (12:05):
Watch and describing as sexual assault.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
So yes, in.
Speaker 5 (12:09):
The early two thousands, he groped one of the women
who came to him for the spirituals and olpusta member
in fact, and she reported the issue to OPU Stay
and they did nothing, and she threatened to sue. And
when she threatened to sue, Opus Stay decided to smuggle
(12:29):
this guy out of the country. They basically sent him
off to England to live in the OLPAH Stay Center
in London where he couldn't be served with papers or
arrested or whatever. And there was a good reason for that,
and that was because mc mccoskey had become the face
of OLPUS Day in Washington, d C. And as you say,
he'd recruited vast numbers of the Conservative Republican elite to
(12:53):
OPA 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
thing Olpasta needed was for him to be embroiled in
this sex gangle, and so they shipped him off to England. Meanwhile,
(13:14):
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 DC, so he went off
initially to Chicago, but then they shipped him out to
Silicon Valley to recruit out there in Silicon Valley. And
this whole thing went away until a few years later
(13:37):
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 was carrying on doing
that in his ministry, and so she decided to basically
go public and to expose what had happened. So, yeah,
(13:59):
are there influential people in other places around the world. Oh, absolutely, absolutely,
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 WHO in seventy five in Chile. They were kind
(14:20):
of part of the efforts to destabilize the Allende government
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
(14:41):
managed again to penetrate the kind of the Filipino political elite.
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 the post. It's not
(15:03):
possible to request membership. You have to be invited in
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 pushed them into membership. And
again that tells you what you need to know. This
(15:24):
is it's not a club that's open to anyone. It's
a club specifically for targeted individuals who are in a
position to shape society.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Guys, you're a financial investigator and journalists, you talk about
others either conspiracy or conspiracy theories in the financial industry.
Speaker 5 (15:42):
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
(16:02):
started recording about whole BCCI scandal the late eighties, knowing
nineties what people discovered that this bank had been used
to funnel money to the Taliban, to pakistanis into all
over the place. There's a great book called Billion Dollar Whale,
which is about a huge scandal in Malaysia where billions
were siphoned by this guy and some of the money
(16:23):
was used to finance the film The Wolf of Wall
for Ball three.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
So opusta a it he has goals? What are its
goals through the US? Because you know, we see Project
twenty twenty five which has a huge amount of influence
of opus Sta people leading it and guiding it forward.
So what would a future US look like if opus
Stay gets its way.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
I don't think Opista has any specific goals. Its goals
kind of shift and change according to whatever's happening. So
in the early nineteen thirties in 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.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Nick Church great again, but also make.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
Conservative reading of the Catholic faith great again. So I
think these days, obviously there's the kind of hot button
issues like abortion and same sex marriage and contraception and
all that kind of thing. But I think really the
goal for opus day is to have is what we
were saying Earlieres, is to have the right hinder people,
(17:27):
our kind of people in positions of power making the
right decisions, the right moral Catholic decisions about these things,
and so 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
(17:50):
those people go out and make the right decisions for
themselves based on the reading of the Bible. 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
(18:10):
second Trump administration. He's a regular at the OLPA Stay
Center in Central Washington. He gets his spiritual guidance from
an open state priest, and you can be rest assured
that OPU Stay'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 OPA Stay. I wouldn't be surprised
(18:33):
to see a similar number, if not more, in the second.
In the second administration, you might assume, Okay, they don't
really believe in these particular policies.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
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 3 (18:59):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
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 they see this as a religious war.
It's a war against atheism, it's a war against progressivism.
(19:21):
They 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 4 (19:29):
I think there are wide.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
Sections of the Catholic Church, including some of its most
senior people, who recognize that OPUS Stay 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
(19:54):
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 nine, maybe these days this doesn't happen,
but certainly in recent history, whenever an organization was presented
(20:15):
with horrendous scandal or abuse, the reaction is, oh, my goodness,
this is terrible. We're going to launch a huge investigation.
We're going to get to the bottom of this. We're
going to ensure that this is all sorted at, and
we're gonna absolutely going to get We'll get to the
bottom of this. Opus Day's reaction to my book and
to the allegations I make in my book has been
(20:36):
to stick the finger and fingers in their ears and
go la la.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
La la, la, la, la la lao.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
They just don't want to engage with the book in
any way. They have monted 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, all
completely false. They've created this kind of alternative narrative that
the book is all about this one Spanish guy and
(21:03):
it's I'm besmirching his character and it's an assault on
this poor guy that's not true. This is then exposed
a about topper s 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 to decades
(21:24):
of use and manipulation, and would involve them having to
admit that many of these practices are ongoing today as well.
Thank you guys having me on.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Cipher,
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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