By Dr. Robert Moynihan in Inside the Vatican
In 2006, when The Da Vinci Code was released as a film, some high Church officials strongly objected to it because it was based on the idea that Jesus married and fathered children and because it depicted Opus Dei, a recognized Prelature within the Catholic Church, as a murderous cult.
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Poor Dan Brown! He completely missed the story!
In his novels The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, he depicts Opus Dei (the Latin words mean "the work of God") as a world-spanning, secret, sinister organization, and the Vatican as impenetrable, mysterious, and dangerous.
After leafing through the books, I wondered this afternoon what I might encounter as I rang the doorbell at #75 viale Bruno Buozzi, the world headquarters of Opus Dei.
The building's walls were tall and white, constructed of large blocks of what seemed to be travertine marble; the doorway seemed oddly small.
A woman answered.
"Come around the corner to via di Villa Sacchetti," she said. "The first door you come to on the left..."
Did Dan Brown ever go to Opus Dei headquarters? It wouldn't have been difficult... It's in Parioli, a wealthy Roman neighborhood just a mile or so out from Piazza del Popolo.
I went there today with my old friend, Richard Mileti, a retired Catholic historian from Cleveland, Ohio (he has been visiting Rome for a couple of days).
As soon as we reached the door, a receptionist opened the door, poked her head out, and greeted us.
"We'd like to visit the tomb of St. Josemaria," I said. "And we would like to talk to someone about Opus Dei and Dan Brown's book, Angels and Demons. Is that possible?"
"Yes, of course," the receptionist said.
We were guided to a small waiting room, and the receptionist told us we would soon be joined by a guide who would show us around the headquarters.
I looked around the little room. It seemed a bit dark, so I went to open what seemed to be a window in the back corner. But when I opened the window, there was just a 4-inch recession, then a blank wall, with a fluorescent bulb to illuminate the room through the glass.
Then there was a sound and a motion at the door, and a young woman entered the room.
"Hi," she said, in English. "I am Claudia. I can try to answer any questions you have, and I will show you around."
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"I am from Guatemala."
"And are you a member of Opus Dei?"
"Yes, I am a numerary. Do you know what that is?"
"Yes," I said. "You have taken a vow never to marry."
"Not precisely a vow," she said, laughing a bit bashfully. "I have made a commitment."
Claudia was a lovely young woman with raven-black hair and olive skin and bark eyes. She was poised and polite.
"Have you heard of the book Angels and Demons?" I asked.
"Who hasn't?" she said, and laughed again.
"What do you think of it?" I asked.
"I haven't read it."
I asked Claudia how old she was.
"I just turned 24," she said.
I asked how she came to join Opus Dei, what had attracted her.
"I met some members of The Work in my country," she answered. "I was so struck by their overflowing sense of having a meaning and purpose in their lives, that I began to want to spend more and more time with them. I began to meet with them. I began to discuss with them, and ask questions of them. And after a while it was clear to me that I had a vocation. This vocation..."
"What do you mean?" I asked. "How did you know?"
"I sensed, deep inside, that there was a love and a meaning which responded to my own deepest longings, and I wanted to be close to that love and meaning. It was an attraction that I felt, like a magnet, like a warm fire in winter-time, when your hands are cold, and you stretch out your hands toward the fire. I was warmed by what I loved, by words and prayers and songs and contemplation, and the more I drew close to what I loved, the more right and complete I felt, and so I decided to continue on this journey, wherever it leads, to the end."
We discussed our schedule for the afternoon: we would go down to the tomb of the saint, visit the chapel where he is buried, then try to reach the Opus Dei spokesman, Manuel Sanchez.
"But let me get another person to come with us, because I am rather new here," Claudia said. "Someone who may be more qualified to answer any question you have."
She left the room. I turned to Richard. "Well?" I said.
"Hey," he said, "what do you want me to say? She's an angel..."
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When Claudia came back, she brought with her a slightly older woman, who said her name was Rosario.
"In Italy, it would be Rosaria, but it is Rosario in Spanish," she said. "I am from Madrid."
Rosario seemed extraordinarily refined. Her hands and fingers moved when she spoke, and her grey eyes observed us attentively and with evident intelligence.
"A second angel," Richard said.
We went out of the reception room and started down four flights of steps -- down, down, down, down. I think we must have been 60 feet under the level of the street.
We came to a small chapel, where we saw an altar and, in a glass case against the wall, a figure of a beautiful woman lying with her hands folded upon her chest and her feet in sandal.
"This is the chapel of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary," Rosario said.
I read the inscription on the side of the altar: "Assumpta est Maria in caelum. Gaudet exercitus angelorum." ("Mary was assumed into heaven. The army of angels rejoices.")
"More angels," I said to Richard.
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.St. Josemaria's tomb is at the front of a small chapel called the chapel of Santa Maria della Pace (St. Mary of Peace). (Photo, me standing in front of the tomb.)
His body has been moved there from its original resting place nearby, where two large words are still written on the center of the flat stone, though Escriva's body is no longer there: "El Padre" — "The Father."
The stone now covers the body of Bishop Alvaro del Portillo (1914-1994), St. Josemaría’s first successor at the head of Opus Dei.)
When I entered the chapel, I knelt for a moment in front of the saint's tomb, on his feast day.
(Once, some years ago, when my second son, Luke, fell and hit his head while playing soccer, causing a concussion and a terrible bloody eye, I chose to say a prayer to St. Josemaria — saying to myself, "I need a tough saint for this task" — that Luke might not lose his eye, or have brain damage. And when the doctor came back, after two hours of tests, he said, "I'm quite surprised, but it looks like there will be no permanent damage whatsoever.")
Rosario nodded to me.
"Here is something you should see," she said.
She indicated a small niche in the very back of the chapel. What was there? Swords? Yes, some 60 swords were hung up in rows on both sides of the niche, like an emergency arsenal...
"Why?" I asked.
"These are the swords of all those military men who entered Opus Dei, and gave up their swords in order to show symbolically that they wished only to work for peace."
The blades glistened in the cabinet, behind a glass window. There were even some daggers there.
In the front of the case was a small box containing a gilded flower, a rose, made out of wood.
"What's this?" I asked Rosario.
"Ah," she said. "There is a story behind that rose.
"In 1936, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Fr Escriva went into hiding in Madrid. Eventually, to escape persecution, he left the city, persuaded by his followers. On November 21, 1937, he spent the night in a small room in a ruined church and spent the night in prayer, not sure whether he should go forward or back.
"That night, he asked for a sign from God. He asked that our Lady would give him a rose if God wanted him to continue.
"The next morning, Fr Escriva left the room. When he returned, he held a gilded wooden rose in is hand — this rose. And so he kept going."
I listened,
Then Rosario added: "In 1936, when the militia sacked the church, they had torn down the wooden altarpiece and carried it outside to burn. But the rose, part of the frame of roses encircling the image of Our Lady of the Rosary, survived. Fr Escriva saw it as the sign he had requested."
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Just at that moment, an important Vatican official whom I have known for many years entered the chapel. I waited, but the official did not turn toward me or see me. So I asked Rosario to go up to the prelate, and ask if I could speak with him at the back of the chapel.
She did so, and he came with her.
We greeted each other, and spoke about the strange coincidence of meeting just then in the chapel of St. Josemaria.
"I just felt this morning that I should come here today," I told him.
"So did I," he replied.
And then I asked him about the Ecclesia Dei Commission document, which is much on my mind, as I wrote on Thursday.
"Why has it still not been published, though it has been finished for some time?" I asked.
"It isn't yet finished," he said, without emotion.
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Rosario and I looked at the eight doors around the edges of a room next to the chapel.
"Where do all these doors lead to?" I asked. I wondered if there might be some underground passageways...
Rosario opened one door: a closet.
"What about that one?" I asked.
She opened it.
There was only a wall there. But on the wall was painted, in perspective, a long corridor leading far away. If you looked at the painting without realizing it was a painting, it seemed like you were looking down a 100-yard passageway.
"That's pretty bizarre," I said.
"It's just a false doorway," Rosario said, laughing. "Just for fun."
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Richard and I walked back up the stairs with Rosario and Claudia, and we sat for a moment in the reception room where we had begun our visit.
A young African woman poked her head in the door.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"My name is Jennifer," she said. "I am from Nariobi, Kenya." She laughed, for no reason. Her dark skin, bright smile and flashing eyes lit up the room. She was like a lightning bolt in human form.
I asked her how she had come to join Opus Dei, and what she thought of the book Angels and Demons, and she said: "Look, people are interested in different things. Dan Brown was evidently interested in earning a lot of money. Ordinary people are easy to deceive. Just tell them a tall tale, and they will believe it, even if it is a complete fabrication.
"But my focus is a different one. I'm here in Rome to study canon law, and I don't want to be distracted from that. So I've never even read that book. If it says things about Opus Dei that aren't true, I'm sorry. But I have set my life in a certain direction. I'm like a woman who has fallen in love and knows she wants to marry a certain man. I want to give my entire life to Christ.
"And I think that the best way I can defend Opus Dei, and the Church, is simply to live my life in complete abandonment to God's will, so that my example outweighs any slander anyone may invent — if that is even the case. I am focused on the positive, not the negative. My eyes are set on the goal, and I don't want to take them off that goal, because I want to get there."
Richard looked at me, marveling at the eloquence and poise of the young lady.
"Another angel," he said.
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Richard and I walked down the hill to the the Basilica of Sant'Eugenio for the evening Mass in honor of St. Josemaria. The basilica was completely filled, leaving standing room only to the very back of the church.
The novels of Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, have depicted Opus Dei as a very powerful but sinister force in the world.
But Brown has somehow seen demons where there are angels. This is puzzling. Has he also seen angels where there are demons?
In front of the Church, the Opus Dei spokesman, Manuel Sanchez, was waiting. He is from Granada, Spain, in the far south, near the Rock of Gibraltar.
"I am looking for angels and demons," I said to Manuel. "Dan Brown says they can be found in Opus Dei. What do you think?"
"That's easy," Sanchez said. "The angels and demons are in each one of us."
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