The Bishop, descendant of José María de Escrivá in the driving of opus, Álvaro del Portillo, will be beatified in Madrid on September 27. Wasn't there any new winds at the Vatican?

They are very pragmatic in the Vatican and they know that Opus Dei is a very strong current. It is true that the people of Opus have no power there, as before, but beatification was planned before the new pope was appointed. In addition, the Vatican has a habit of canonizing the founder of the institution and its second, which was clearly going to happen.

Has Opus lost the power Joan Paulo had II.arekin?

Of course it does. Among other things, because the new pope is an old Jesuit, with a Jesuit tradition against Opus. The Oppussians cannot contradict them directly, because it would be scandalous, but it is not enough to not name them, and that is what it does: it does not mention them at all.

What about the policy of the Spanish State?

He had power with Franco, but now he has none. Except for that supernumerary minister who says nonsense about Santa Teresa, there is no one else. Opus has only been strong in the dictatorships, in the dictatorships of Franco, in the dictatorships of Txileku, in the dictatorships of Argentina. It currently has no weight within the People's Party.

Has it not influenced the legal reform of abortion?

I would not attribute that “merit” to Opus. Rajoy and Gallardón are fighting to recover the voters of the extreme right and to flatter the hierarchy of the Church, which has been dissolved. But they haven't done well, because they've had a broad counter response, even among the popular.

The beatification and canonization of Escrivá provoked a discussion about the sectarian nature of Opus Dei. You were among the first to report it.

Yes, because I lived Opus Dei inside. But it has to be acknowledged that it has changed a lot. In the early days, lay numeraries (engineers, lawyers or doctors) had to set an example, make a sanctification of everyday work, comply with what I still do not understand well. Over time, clericalization has been on the rise: All the rulers of Opus are now priests, there are no laity among the authorities. By the way, educational centers have been created, giving up the initial tradition, since Escrivá did not want schools, and that is the only thing they have now. In fact, Opus has replaced the Jesuits in the education of middle and upper-middle class students. In each of the major cities of Spain and Latin America there are schools and that is why most of the members of Opus are professors. They live in lockdown in schools, and in that internal bureaucracy they exhaust all the time and energy. That is where the nature of the sect of this institution can be seen, among other reasons, because control over its members is enormous. Ideologically, they are also totally orthodox, right-wing, like the Legionaries of Christ or the Kicos.

These movements, like those of Kiko, have known a brutal boom in Joan Paulo II.arekin.

Yes, that's true. Especially in South America, where the Catholic religion is refuted. In Europe, the Catholic religion has no weight: people do not go to Mass, do not confess, do not marry in the churches and there are hardly any priests. In the Spanish state, the average age of priests is 64 years. In South America, however, competition between Protestants and Catholics is very tough, especially in Brazil.

The Opusdeilibros website contains numerous cases of depressed people who have committed suicide. Don't they exaggerate?

No. The loneliness of Opus and the change it has experienced have brought two novelties: on the one hand, many colleagues have escaped at full speed, the most intellectuals have escaped. On the other hand, there are psychological problems, it's very hard to belong to Opus and a lot of people go crazy. They should be taking pills at all times. An organization woman confessed to me that most older women in Opus take pills against depression or anxiety.

In this sense, you have denounced what happens on the fourth floor of the university hospital of Pamplona.

On this floor, a structure has been prepared to serve those who are about to go crazy. When I wrote the article on the subject, there were 50 people living there. Now, surely, there will be more.

How do people get Opus websites like Opuslibros?

They would want to close it, and if they had enough power, it would remain closed. They live in such a tight environment that they do not allow critical voices to be heard from their members. But the director of the website has confessed to me that many of the visits they receive are due to members inside Opus.

Is it complicated to get out of Opus?

The economic account is very important. The Oppussians have to hand over all their money to the organization, so many of their members don't leave because they don't have money. When I decided to leave, I had two advantages: I had a trade and my family didn't need any money. So I didn't have any problems. In Peru, when I was rector of the University of Piura, I made the decision.

When Escriva created Opus, he recruited the young people who were against the Republic. Now they get their followers in schools…

Born in the 1930s, Escrivá, as a smart man, travelled to the residences of Catholic students in Madrid and Valencia, where he got his first ten or eleven followers. At the end of the Civil War, religiosity grew extraordinarily; Franco was national-catholic and, in this context, many people joined Opus. Now everything has changed, children have begun to be recruited in two ways: in their schools and in the families of the supernumeraries. Although Canonical Law prohibits it, they recruit children between the ages of 13 and 14, although most Baccalaureate graduates leave the institution. Opus Dei is not compatible with freedom and when these young people go to the streets, when they go to college, they leave the institution. In addition, there is the issue of sex. Forcing someone who is not a priest or friar, who is part of society, not to have sex is terrible. Many have gone crazy about it.

It was not so much the controversy raised by the possibility of subsidizing centres that differentiate them on the basis of sex.

The People’s Party is against constitutional doctrine when it allows schools that distinguish boys and girls to be subsidised. I'm convinced they make that distinction to get vocations. There are no pedagogical reasons, they find it easier to advertise in one-sex schools.