THE OPUS DEI POPES: PART I – JOHN PAUL II

“Wealth doesn’t just beget more wealth – it begets more power.” Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and Professor.

Imagine if a group of immensely wealthy members of a Catholic secret society had a place from where they could make as many immoral, unethical and/or illegal financial transaction and investments as possible – all hidden, tax free and sheltered from any laws or regulations.

Such a place exists. The CIA Factbook notes that the Vatican’s “industries” include “worldwide banking and financial activities.”  The Holy See, the official name of the independent city/state, provides immunity to its officials from all outside laws and regulations and most of their finances remain secret.

This is the history of how Opus Dei took control of the Vatican’s immense wealth and, therefore, the power to direct and influence others from the Catholic Church’s headquarters.  

OPUS DEI

Opus Dei, Latin for “Work of God”, was founded in 1928 by Fr. Josemaría Escrivá in Spain. Their members are “to seek personal Christian perfection through ordinary life” according to their website. Non-Catholics are welcomed as “cooperators” who “assist the educational and social undertakings promoted by the group.”

“Opus Dei is mostly middle- and upper-class businessmen, professionals, military personnel and government officials. Its members control a large number of banks and financial institutions,” wrote Martin A. Lee, author of books and articles on far-right movements, in 1983.

At the top, however: “Opus Dei is an efficient machine run to achieve world power,” stated investigative reporter Penny Lernoux in her book, People of God (1989).

A Canadian financial reporter, Robert Hutchison, became interested in the group after noticing their activity in the euro currency market. His painstakingly researched book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei (1997), is the only book available in English which provides a detailed picture of the group as revealed through their financial holdings and transactions.

Hutchison states that Opus Dei and the Roman Catholic Church are now indivisible. This would include the Church’s global financial network anchored by the legally untouchable Vatican.

 “Opus Dei uses the Catholic Church for its own ends which are money and power” noted Hutchison in his introduction. “The problem is Opus Dei’s hidden power. [In practice] Opus Dei operates as it wishes, where it wishes, in total obscurity, with or without papal consent, unburdened by any form of oversight,” Hutchison stated.

“Opus Dei pursues the Vatican’s agenda through the presence of its members in secular governments and institutions …. Its constant effort [is] to increase its presence in civil institutions of power,” Hutchinson wrote.

Since members’ names are secret unless self-revealed, sometimes we can know who is a member by other means as is the case for several officials of the Trump administration.

William Barr, before his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation as Trump’s attorney general, had completed a questionnaire. On page 4, he listed positions he’s held including director of Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center.

Located at 15th and K Street two blocks from the White House, the CIC is “a rallying point for ultra-conservative Catholics eager for a voice in the secular halls of government power” and “advances a hard-right political agenda,” according to Church and State, the magazine of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The CIC’s “members and leaders continue to have an outsize impact on policy and politics. It is the conservative spiritual and intellectual center … and its influence is felt in all of Washington’s corridors of power,” reported the Washington Post.

Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel, served on the board of directors of the CIC. Cipollone was the “architect” of Trump’s fight against impeachment”   stated NPR.

Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s chief of staff, is a member of Opus Dei according to the official news service of the U.S. Catholic bishops. As Trump’s Director of the Office of Budget and Management, Mulvany “met with a long list of lobbyists, corporate executives and wealthy people with business interests before the government.” His meeting with Opus Dei’s Jeff Bell, architect of Reaganomics, covered “religious and political matters,” as reported by the Washington Post and ProPublica.

Larry Kudlow was Trump’s director of the National Economic Council. Plutocracy is “just what America needs,” Kudlow wrote in December 2016. “Putting the incredibly wealthy in charge of the U.S. government” was described as Kudlow’s great idea.

Kudlow is one of Fr. John McCloskey’s notable converts to Catholicism. McCloskey was director of the CIC from 1998-2002. Another McCloskey convert is former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, Trump’s Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.

All of the above no longer have much power now that Trump is out of office but may still work for increasing the wealth of the American plutocracy. For example, Bill Barr is now chair of the Center for Legal Action’s advisory board as reported by Politico. He will seek to dismantle the “increasingly out of control” regulatory state through litigation, He said the CLA will mainly oppose “regulations that have a wide systemic impact, like the SEC’s climate disclosure proposal, but also regulations that harm specific business sectors,” Politico stated.

However, the American member of Opus Dei most damaging to our democracy is Leonard Leo, Co-Chairman and former Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society and another CIC board member.

As early as 2000, communications professor Jerry Landay wrote in his profile of the Federalist Society: “With 25,000 members plus scores of close affiliates nationwide – including Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia … the Federalist Society is quite simply the best-organized, best-funded, and most effective legal network operating in this country. Its rank-and-file includes conservative lawyers, law students, law professors, bureaucrats, activists, and judges …. What gets less attention, however, is that the Society is accomplishing in the courts what Republicans can’t achieve politically.” (Washington Monthly, March 2000).

Leo was also head of Catholic outreach for the Republican Party during the G. W. Bush administration, Jason DeParle wrote in his article ““Debating the Subtle Sway of the Federalist Society” (New York Times August 1, 2005).

Leo organized the outside coalition efforts in support of the Roberts and Alito Supreme Court confirmations. Leo advised President Trump on judicial selections and assisted with the Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett Supreme Court selection and confirmation process.

Leo will impact the U.S. judiciary – including the Supreme Court – for decades to come, as reported by Politico. “As executive vice president of the Federalist Society, Leo has been the quiet architect of a pivotal shift to the right throughout the federal judiciary” including “dozens of lower court federal judges across the country …. Leo can take credit for installing five Supreme Court justices – John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett,” Politico noted.

It was Leo who prepared Trump’s “list of judges and the people that he’s put on the bench,” NPR reported.

Note that four of the five justices Leo placed on the Supreme Court – Roberts, Alito, Kavanaugh and Barrett – are Catholic. Gorsuch, an Episcopalian, was raised Catholic and went to the same elite Catholic prep school as Kavanaugh. He voted twice in favor of the Catholic position to restrict Obamacare’s contraception coverage during his time at the U.S. Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit.

In July 2021, the Supreme Court decided two major cases. In both, the 6-3 conservative majority dealt a grievous blow against democracy. One decision “essentially gutted what’s left of the Voting Rights Act,” Nina Totenberg said on NPR. The other decision, “sided with rich donors and their desire to remain anonymous against a state law aimed at policing the finances of charities and other nonprofits,” Totenberg said in another NPR broadcast.

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the constitutional right to an abortion reversing Roe v. Wade, the court’s five-decade-old decision. This has been the principle campaign of the American bishops for decades as will be explained later.

OPUS DEI  IS TRANSNATIONAL

“Its members form a transnational elite. They seek to colonize the summits of power. They work with stealth – ‘holy discretion’ – and practice ‘divine deception,’” Robert Hutchison wrote in the introduction to his book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei.

Unlike other religious organizations, Opus Dei doesn’t even make a pretense of engaging in any form of charity. Known among its members as “The Work,” Opus Dei’s “work” is graduate business schools so that members will increase their wealth and, therefore, power. They “support 14 graduate business schools worldwide, including Lagos Business School in Nigeria and Ipade in Mexico,” reported Management Today, a publication for British business.

This global network of MBA institutions was the subject of a 2006 Bloomberg article: “Opus Dei’s emphasis is on recruiting and training businesspeople.”

At Spain’s IESE, Opus Dei‘s flagship graduate business school, “PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, one of the Big Four US accounting firms, funds the jobs of some of the school’s professors. Nissan Motor, Japan’s No2 automaker; Alcatel SA, the world’s second-largest supplier of telecommunications networks; and Banco Santander Central Hispano SA, Spain’s biggest bank, also provide funding….Citigroup, the world’s biggest financial services company, and Morgan Stanley, the third-biggest US securities firm by market value, are listed as ‘supporting companies’….Citigroup has sponsored student activities and backed events in IESE’s MBA program,” Bloomberg reported.

Because members’ names are secret, all we can say is that some men are “close to” Opus Dei. For example, Peter Sutherland, Irish “master of the universe,” was on the advisory board of IESE. Sutherland was managing director and chairman of Goldman Sachs International, advisory director of Goldman Sachs Group, former chairman of BP Oil and European chairman of the Trilateral Commission. Pope Francis appointed him as an adviser to APSA, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See that manages most of the investments, commercial real estate and bank accounts owned by the Vatican.

George Yeo is also on the advisory board of IESE. Yeo is a member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum and the Hong Kong Economic Development Commission. He is the former finance minister of Singapore and a Brigadier-General in the Singapore Armed Forces. Pope Francis appointed him to his Council for the Economy.

As of 2006, the U.S. branch of Opus Dei has had student residences or foundations “located near prestigious schools” including MIT, Boston University, UCLA, Colombia, Harvard, Princeton, Brown University, Georgetown University, Rice University, UC Berkley, Stanford University, University of San Francisco, St. Louis University “and more,” according to the Opus Dei Awareness Network.

 “If we’re working with students, 30 years later they’ll be CEOs,” Opus Dei priest and Harvard graduate, John Wauck, told Bloomberg.

KAROL WOJTYLA

Opus Dei has been an official arm of the Catholic Church since 1982. That was the year Pope John Paul II’s decree stated that Opus Dei was a “personal prelature,” a previously unknown form of ecclesial organization, in which the members are free from obedience to every bishop in the world and answerable only to the pope – one who, the leaders of Opus Dei planned, was willing to protect their worldwide wealth and power.

A COMPLIANT MAN

In order to control the Vatican, first it was necessary for Opus Dei to find a candidate for pope who would be compliant with their direction.

After World War II, in order to accommodate the Polish communist government demands, the Vatican gave the Communist Party the power to veto their selection of prelates. When the archbishop of Krakow died in 1964, Zenon Kiszko, chief ideologist of the Party, said he would keep declining candidates put forward by the Vatican until he got the name he wanted – Karol Wojtyla. (Andrew Nagorski  “John Paul II and Communism” Newsweek April 2, 2005).

Kiszko thought Wojtyla the “least political” and “least likely to get into political fights with the Party…. Prominently noted in Wojtyla’s file was his voluntary, friendly approach to the Party’s first secretary in 1959, to negotiate a common-sense compromise in a silly dispute over dormitory space. Such cooperation was unprecedented in high churchmen.” After refusing the first seven names proposed by Rome, Kliszko approved Wojtyla as archbishop, (Jonathan Kwitny Man of the Century, The Life and Times of Pope John Paul II 1997).  

When Wojtyla was elevated to cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1967, “his appointment as cardinal was welcomed by the government. Wojtyla was considered ‘tough but flexible’ and a moderate reformer, and an improvement on the old-school hardliners who were unalterably opposed to communism and communists.” (CNN Special Report 2005)   

GROOMING WOJTYLA

In 1969, “a special general congress of Opus Dei met in Rome to study the [possibility of] change of Opus Dei’s legal status in the Church to that of a personal prelature” according to the opusdei.org website.

Until that same year, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla’s only travels outside of Poland had been a handful of trips to Rome. The campaign to have Wojtyla elected as pope began with his trip to the U.S. and Canada. He arrived in the U.S on Sept. 16, 1969, the first Polish cardinal to visit North America. Wojytla’s tour included stops in 14 American cities including Boston, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. according to several accounts. None mentioned who funded the trip or arranged the itinerary.

In 1970, the Gomulka government fell after the eruption of bloody riots and strikes due to rising food prices. Nevertheless, Wojtyla had the funds to tour Europe that year. In 1973, the cardinal attended a meeting of churchmen in Australia, with stopovers in New Zealand, the Philippines and Papúa, New Guinea. Other destinations that year included Belgium, Rome and a three-city tour of France. The next year included several trips to Italy including Rome. In 1975, Wojtyla went to Milan, Fribourg (Switzerland), and a trip to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) as Jesús López Sáez reported in his article “El Dia de la Cuenta: Juan Pablo II a Examen,” (Asociacion Comunidad de Ayala 2002). 

Poland experienced another year of great unrest due to food shortages in 1976 when Wojtyla was able to make another trip to the U.S for six weeks that summer which included a lecture at Harvard, as noted by The Atlantic. He visited 13 cities, including Detroit, Washington D.C., St. Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York as listed in the Catholic Way Home publication.
The Vatican usually only pays travel costs for their own employees. So the question remains, how did a prelate from a country experiencing food shortages have the funds for extensive international travel?

CONCLAVE

In 1977, the prelate of Wall Street, New York’s Cardinal Terence Cooke, went to Krakow to discuss with Wojtyla his candidacy to succeed Pope Paul VI, as reported by investigative journalist, Martin A. Lee, in his article “Their Will Be Done” (Mother Jones July/August 1983).

Paul VI died on Aug. 6, 1978. Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected pope on Aug. 26 and took the name John Paul. Known as the “Smiling Pope,” Luciani declared his intention to clean up the corruption in Vatican finance. He died on Sept. 28.There was immediate controversy. John Paul was considered to be in good health, there were discrepancies in the Vatican’s account of information surrounding his death, and his body was immediately embalmed – not usual in either Vatican or Italian law according to David A. Yallop in his book In God’s Name – An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I (1984).

Yallop, an agnostic British author who wrote chiefly about unsolved crimes, concluded that Luciani was poisoned by those involved in the financial corruption. Others published articles and books refuting Yallop’s construction of events. The mystery remains to this day as evidenced by an article, “Was Pope John Paul I murdered?” published as recently as Sept. 2, 2022 on The Pillar website.

For most of the world, the election of the Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla on October 16, 1978, was a shock. Fr. Andrew Greeley, a best-selling author and sociologist, was part of the crowd in St. Peter’s Square when the announcement was made. “In response to the name Karol Wojtyla (Voy-TIH-wa), came a stunned silence, with just a smattering of hand-claps. Most people in the piazza don’t seem to know who he is,” Greeley wrote in his book, The Making of the Popes 1978: The Politics of Intrigue in the Vatican (1979).

Before leaving for Rome after the death of Luciani, Wojtyla uncharacteristically wrote a demand for the end of communist censorship of the press. The sudden death of Luciani made the health of the next pope an issue and “Wojtyla left Poland on October 3, 1978, with an electrocardiogram in his briefcase as proof of his physical fitness,” Greeley wrote in his article, “Politics, piety mix during convention-like conclave” (Chicago Sun-Times April 4, 2005). 

In the days following the funeral of the last pope until the conclave to elect a new one, cardinal-electors gather informally, meet potential candidates and discuss the contenders. Wojtyla had three visible supporters: his close friend, Bishop Deskur of Poland, Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia, the son of Polish immigrants, and Cardinal Konig of Austria.

Franz König, cardinal of Vienna since 1958, had an excellent reputation and great influence among European prelates. He had taken a turn to the right during the 1970s and developed ties with Opus Dei. König brought Wojtyla to their Roman headquarters at Villa Tevere “to pray before the tomb of [founder, Fr. Josemaria] Escriva” just days before the conclave John Follain wrote in his book City of Secrets, The Truth Behind the Murders at the Vatican (2003).

Opus Dei priest (later bishop and vice president of Pope Wojtyla’s Pontifical Commission for Latin America) Cipriano Calderon Polo of Spain brought hundreds of copies of a book of Wojtyla’s reflections which he had presented at a 1976 Lenten retreat. After the cardinals were sequestered in the conclave, König provided each of the electors with that book. After the election, König cast himself in the role of Wojtyla’s “king-maker,” Gunther Simmermacher reported in his article, “The Conclave of October 1978: How John Paul II Became Pope” (Southern Cross, October 15-21, 2003).

In the weeks following his election, the new pontiff was informed of the personnel changes his predecessor wanted to make and why. He was shown evidence of the financial corruption. John Paul II did nothing and, to his death, refused to allow the exhumation of John Paul I’s remains, Yallop wrote. (Wojtyla’s successors have also refused exhumation of Luciani’s remains.)

SUPPORT FOR LATIN AMERICAN OLIGARCHS

The 1968 conference of Latin American bishops, Concejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (CELAM), had met in Medellin, Colombia. The result was astonishing for a faith-group traditionally identified with oligarchs and dictators. The documents produced by the conference began with a declaration acknowledging the suffering of the poor: “The misery that besets large masses of human beings in all of our countries…expresses itself as injustice which cries to the heavens.” Political reform was a “pre-requisite” of change to systems which “favor privileged groups.”

CELAM affirmed the right of bishops to take collective action independent of the Vatican. Also, they wrote, the entire “People of God” included the laity, not just the clergy and hierarchy, thereby threatening the power of the pope. The Medellin documents became “a rallying cry for social reform in Latin America as well as a precedent for Catholic Churches in other developing regions,” Penny Lernoux wrote in her book People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism (1989).

CELAM’s “liberation theology” was dangerous to the political status quo. In most Latin American countries, the oligarchs and American multinational companies kept a strangle-hold on an economy favorable to the wealthy. The wealthy, in turn, funded the dictators who protected their benefactors no matter what the cost in human suffering.  

The CIA recognized liberation theology as a threat. “The CIA doubtless brought its influence to bear on the election [of Wojtyla] through Opus Dei. Thus far it seems likely that the agency is, on balance, fairly pleased with the pope’s performance,” Martin A. Lee wrote in his article “Their Will Be Done“(Mother Jones July/August issue 1983).

The pro-military dictator hierarchs were able to work with the CIA through the Opus Dei financial networks. They all justified their actions as “fighting communism,” Lee noted.

Encouraged by their success in electing Wojtyla, hierarchs connected to Opus Dei took back the upper hand in Latin America. Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo had spent many years at an Opus Dei center for priests in Rome and was an ardent supporter. He planned the next CELAM conference to be held in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979 which marked the first of the 104 international trips taken by John Paul II.

In a working paper for the 1979 Puebla meeting, López Trujillo expressed support for the dictators: “These military regimes came into existence as a response to social and economic chaos. No society can admit a power vacuum. Faced with tensions and disorders, an appeal to force is inevitable,” the cardinal said as quoted by the Vatican reporter, John Allen Jr.

The first exposition for John Paul II’s ideology outside of Italy would come at Puebla. With the pope’s strong defense of freedom and liberty for Poland, his sympathetic statements to all those who suffered from political oppression in Eastern Europe and his declarations of compassion for the poor, supporters of liberation theology looked forward to the pope’s attendance with great anticipation.

“Yet Pope John Paul II was chosen as ‘Vicar of Christ’ expressly as a political operative in the installation of authoritative governments. [At Puebla]Wojtyla, robed in satin and brocade, castigated liberal churchmen for neglecting their ‘religious’ duties if they sought civil means to provide a decent life for others while the pontiff used every means possible to back conservative hierarchs and government officials in the abrogation of basic human rights and decency beginning in Latin America,” the article “God’s Ambassadors” (The Economist July 19, 2007) stated.

THE WOJTYLA/REAGAN ALLIANCE FOR LATIN AMERICAN DICTATORS AND OLIGARCHS

John Paul II set out to eradicate liberation theology, punish its proponents and make Latin America safe for American capitalists in an alliance with Pres. Ronald Reagan.

Under the “pro-life” pope and the “freedom-loving” president, the blood of innocents would drench the soil of Latin America. CELAM, the bishops’ conference, became just another instrument of papal politics. “The curia’s best inquisitor, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, ruled the conference with an iron hand,” Jose Comblin wrote in his article “Changes in the Latin American Church during the pontificate of John Paul II – Part One” (National Catholic Reporter, July 2, 2003).

As soon as Reagan won the 1980 election, Wojtyla appointed Archbishop Pio Laghi to head the Vatican’s Washington D.C. embassy. During the Argentine junta‘s barbaric Dirty War (1976-1983), Laghi, then the Vatican ambassador to Buenos Aires, maintained the junta’s secret lists of those who had been “disappeared.” He also visited the detention camps where opponents of the junta were tortured to bless the officials. “Laghi admitted giving communion to a general he knew to be involved in the massacre of five Irish Argentine priests and seminarians – this at the funeral Mass for the slain priests” Penny Lernoux reported.

In a speech given to the Argentine military in 1976, Laghi said, “The Church and the armed forces share responsibility for maintaining Christian values. The former is an integral element in the process. It accompanies the latter, not only by its prayers but by its actions,” the archbishop said as quoted by John L. Allen Jr.

In Washington, a close relationship developed between Laghi, Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey and William Clark, his National Security Advisor. “’Casey and I dropped into his [Laghi’s] residence early mornings during critical times to gather his comments and counsel,’ said Clark….On at least six occasions Laghi came to the White House and met with Clark or the President; each time, he entered the White House through the southwest gate in order to avoid reporters,” Clark said as quoted by Carl Bernstein’s article, “The Holy Alliance” (Time Magazine February 24, 1992).

Reagan’s ambassador to the Vatican, William Wilson, sat in on a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz and Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli. According to Wilson:  “[Schultz] explained the problems we are having in Nicaragua and how the Church could be helpful in certain aspects of that….We found that there are Catholic clergy who are very active in the matter of liberation theology in a way that puts them strongly against the current regime in Nicaragua. That is certainly relevant in political terms and hence of considerable interest here. And that interest would extend to the identity of the people, and how effective they are and what their following is, and what their followers are going to do about it, and whether this is being used by the current regime in a positive or negative sense. All of that is fair game,”  as quoted by Thomas J. Reese S.J in his book Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church (1998) Wilson later denied giving the Vatican a list of clergy and religious the U.S. wanted “removed,” Reese noted.

In 1985, when Congress was considering a Reagan request for resumption of aid to the Contras – the U.S. backed militia trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan Sandinista government – Reagan told news photographers that Pope John Paul II “has been most supportive of all our activities in Central America,” quoted Reese.

THE WOJTYLA/REAGAN ALLIANCE FOR AMERICAN PLUTOCRATS

“Political strength flows disproportionately to the wealthy. Politicians act on the policy preferences of the wealthy overlooking those from average citizens. This began in the 1980s,” Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and Professor, said as quoted by reporter Chris Adams (National Press Foundation, Nov 13. 2020).

The goal of neoconservatives was to transfer American wealth to the richest 1 percent. The neocons have a “brutal reliance on power and propaganda. They are counter-revolutionaries intent on undoing the progressive political achievements of the twentieth century,” wrote Stephen Eric Bronner, professor of Political Science at Rutgers University.

As the nation celebrated its bicentennial, separation of church and state was an established principle. There was virtually no public debate on the subject. So the “religious right” was intentionally created by neocons to energize Protestant and Catholic conservatives to political activism and to get out their votes for those Republicans who shared the goal of transferring wealth to the 1 percent. It was an audacious and brilliant plan to convince these Christians that they were choosing “moral values” instead of voting for the diminishing wealth for the 99%.

There were several factors favoring the success of their plan. Clergy, unlike politicians, were treated with deference by the media, a presumption of their sincerity so as not to offend their followers. As long as they promoted issues – carefully constructed by the neocons to be anti-abortion, anti-gay rights (now including transphobia) and support for Israel (now including Islamaphobia) – and not candidates, religious organization are immune through their 501(c)(3) tax code from any requirement of financial disclosure or accountability. Additionally, donors are assured of complete anonymity and get a tax deduction to boot.

Support for a bellicose Israel was especially aimed at Evangelicals who believe in a literal interpretation of the Old Testament giving Israel a uniquely elevated status. The neocons would use this to gain their tolerance for obscenely huge government funding of the military-industrial complex.

Being anti-abortion was especially suitable for Catholic hierarchs, leaders of a male-only institution, misogynistic by its nature.
Capturing the Catholic vote had advantages. In the 1970s, the number of Catholics exceeded the membership of the next 12 denominations combined. At the time, Catholics were concentrated in the states with the largest number of electoral votes: California, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.

Though neither Evangelicals nor Catholics were a majority of voters by themselves, in the 1970s together they could decide elections.

Paul Weyrich, an aide to a Colorado Republican senator, invited fellow-Catholic, Edwin J. Fuelner, Jr., chief of staff to a Republican congressman, to create what would become the Heritage Foundation. Established in 1973, it is the prototype for the neoconservative think-tank and is still among its most influential.

Weyrich is considered to be the architect of the religious right. The first intentionally religious right organization, Christian Voice, was founded in 1978 nominally by Robert Grant. It was an “issues” advocacy group operated out of the Heritage Foundation headquarters. In a 1979 news conference, the disillusioned Grant claimed the organization was a “sham…controlled by three Catholics and a Jew” – Paul Weyrich, Terry Dolan, Richard Viguerie and Howard Phillips, a Jew who had converted to evangelical Christianity.

In 1979, Weyrich urged televangelist Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority, a phrase coined by Weyrich reminiscent of Nixon’s “silent majority.”  Falwell announced the goal of his new group: “To defend the free enterprise system, the family, Bible morality and fundamental values.” (“The New Right Takes Aim,” TIME August 20, 1979)

The new Christian Right that emerged in the late 1970s was defined by a wave of institution building that targeted multiple areas of American society, especially broadcasting and politics. Lou Dobson founded Focus on the Family. Pat Robertson founded the Christian Broadcasting Network. Along with Falwell’s Moral Majority, the immediate goal was to support Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign, as explained by Frederick Clarkson, senior fellow at Political Research Associates, in an excellent summation of the formation of the religious right.

At the National Affairs Briefing held in the summer of 1980, sponsored by the Religious Roundtable – formed in1979 to bring religious and political leaders together – candidate Reagan was introduced by a Southern Baptist pastor as “God’s man.”
The Moral Majority “played a significant role in the 1980 elections through its strong support of right-wing candidates. It lobbied for prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools, while opposing the Equal Rights Amendment, homosexual rights, abortion, and the U.S.-Soviet SALT disarmament treaties.”
The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan gave the neocons their first experience of political success and an appetite for greater power.

By 1981, “2,445 companies employ D.C. lobbyists, compared to 175 in 1971. Members of Congress receive their donations and, in return, the lobbyists help write their legislation as explained in the article “The United States of inequality: this timeline will help you keep track of how we got here” (FastCompany, Nov. 5, 2019).

In1981, Reagan signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act, “a windfall for America’s wealthiest. Reversing mid-century policies that favored heavy taxation of the rich, Reagan’s tax cut – one of the largest in U.S. history – slashed the highest tax rate from 70% to 50%. Reagan reduced the top bracket again later in his presidency,” the same article reported.

In 1987, Regan’s Federal Communications Commission abolished the Fairness Doctrine that “required licensed radio and television broadcasters to present fair and balanced coverage of controversial issues of interest to their communities, including by granting equal airtime to opposing candidates for public office,” the Encyclopedia Britannica stated. This enabled right-wing propaganda to flourish.

In an April 1982 speech before the National Catholic Education Association, Reagan made the incredible statement, “I am grateful for your help in shaping American policy [and] I will look forward to further guidance from His Holiness Pope John Paul II,” related Penny Lernoux in her book People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism (Viking, 1989). 

As governor of California, Reagan had signed one of the nation’s most liberal abortion laws in 1967. As president, Reagan favored a constitutional amendment to outlaw all abortions except those necessary to preserve the mother’s life.

“American policy was changed as a result of the Vatican’s not agreeing with our policy,” Reagan’s ambassador to the Vatican, William Wilson, stated. “American aid programs around the world did not meet the criteria the Vatican had for family planning. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sent various people from the State Department to Rome, and I’d accompany them to meet the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and in long discussions USAID finally got the message,” Wilson said. “They finally selected different programs and abandoned others as a result of this intervention,” as Carl Bernstein quoted Wilson in his article, “The US and the Vatican on Birth Control” (Time Magazine February 24, 1992).

The Reagan Administration affected changes in Vatican policy as well. The Pontifical Academy of Science had prepared a report taking a stand against Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars). Not only did Ambassador Wilson get the report suppressed but he said the reason was “so that the Holy Father would not make a statement that was not consistent with the way we saw things and the way we wanted things to happen,” Thomas J. Reese, S.J. quoted Wilson in his article Archbishop: Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church (1989).

Because of the John Paul II/Reagan alliance, American Catholic hierarchs would become important not only for their influence on Catholics but also as useful tools for imparting moral respectability to the Republican Party because, when a prelate spoke, the U.S. media provided a deferential platform.

It would, however, take another decade to form a Catholic episcopate dedicated to the success of the American plutocracy. Unlike independent Evangelical pastors, the Catholic Church is a tightly controlled organization. The pope appoints the bishops. The bishops select who becomes a priest. The only way to change the Church is to change the pope.

At the beginning of the Reagan administration, the majority of U.S. bishops, clergy and religious did not support the president. Many had personal ties to their fellow clergy/religious in Latin America suffering under military regimes. In November 1981 the U.S. bishops approved a statement criticizing the military focus of administration policy in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. When Congress was considering Reagan’s request to lift its ban on aid to the Contras in 1985, Archbishop James A. Hickey of Washington described U.S. support for the Contra insurgency as “illegal and, in our judgment, immoral.”

A correction in the American episcopate was necessary for the support of long-term goals of the Republican Party.

Although the pope officially appoints all bishops, in a worldwide organization with thousands of prelates, the papal ambassador in a country usually selects the local candidates and has the greatest say in who is chosen. In considering candidates for American bishops, questionnaires are sent to those who knew the priest under consideration. The questionnaire used by Vatican Ambassador Laghi “asked about the priest’s attitude toward ‘social justice‘[and] their loyalty and docility to the Holy Father … as well as other questions regarding their orthodoxy,” Jason Berry and Gerald Renner wrote in their book Vows of Silence: the Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (2004)

By the time Reagan left office, Laghi had been instrumental in appointing almost 100 U.S. bishops and 12 of the country’s 33 archbishops. Neoconservative Catholics shared the optimism of Republican leaders that the new bishops would counter liberal Catholics and influence the electorate.

The November 10, 1986, meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) at the Capital Hilton Hotel was scheduled to debate the bishops’ controversial pastoral letter on the economy that noted the moral failings in U.S. capitalism: “Vigorous action should be undertaken to remove barriers to full and equal employment for women and minorities….We urge that the principle of progressivity be a central guiding norm in any reforms of the tax system….All of society should make a much stronger commitment to education for the poor….A thorough reform of the nation’s welfare and income-support programs should be undertaken.” The bishops approved the letter by a vote of 225 to nine, Joseph Sobran reported in his article, “Bishop in the Doghouse – Raymond Hunthausen” National Review December 19, 1986.

The rest of the meeting, however, confirmed this would be a watershed for the American episcopacy. At a reception one evening for the press, Congressman Robert K. Dornan (R-Calif.) showed up to castigate Chicago’s Cardinal Joseph Bernardin for his “seamless garment” doctrine which distressed conservatives. Bernardin taught a “consistent pro-life ethic” which included poverty, war and capital punishment as well as abortion as legitimate areas of concern, making the New Right’s abortion-only position appear to be politically motivated, Sobran wrote.  

By the close of the conference, outgoing NCCB president Bishop James W. Malone stated, “The bishops of the United States wish to affirm unreservedly their loyalty to and unity with the Holy Father,” quoted Sobran.

That was the end of the progressive era of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States and, for that matter, pretty much the rest of the world under Wojtyla’s authority.

By 1989, the NCCB would be dominated by papal toadies. Wojtyla had sent a warning that social activism would no longer be tolerated and Vatican allies in the U.S. provided support for the arms race, Penny Lernoux reported.

Within a month after George H. W. Bush took office as president in 1989, he included all five of the U.S. cardinals in meetings at the White House. Cardinals Bernard Law of Boston and John O’Connor of New York spent overnight visits at the White House.

Law attacked what he called “slanderous allegations” when the Boston Globe alleged he had struck a deal with Bush. The Globe article said that Bush had requested Law’s silence on the administration’s lack of response to the Nov. 16, 1989, murders of six Jesuits and two women in El Salvador. In exchange for silence, the Globe said, Law and other U.S. cardinals would receive the president’s support for tax money for church schools and his opposition to abortion according to Gill Donovan in his article “Ambition, defense of institutional Church, drove cardinal’s career” (National Catholic Reporter, Dec. 27, 2002)

Also in 1989, Law went to Spain to ordain 19 Opus Dei priests, Donovan noted.

As each bishop, archbishop or cardinal died, retired or was forced to retire by the Vatican, men loyal to the pope’s political ideology were appointed to rule dioceses, seminaries, formation centers, schools and Church-controlled charities. John Paul II struck at the already shaky moral foundation of the institution by installing men like himself, true to the goals of Opus Dei.

Bishop Fernando Saenz Lacalle, ordained as a priest of Opus Dei, was a brigadier general in the Salvadoran army and founder of Opus Dei in El Salvador. He was elevated to Archbishop of San Salvador by Wojtyla in 1995 with the approval and praise of the barbarous ARENA ruling party[i] as reported in the article “El Salvador: Papal Appointment of a Conservative as Archbishop of San Salvador Stirs Debate” (NotiSur, May 5, 1995) and by the UPI.

The ARENA party was founded in 1981 by the neo-fascist Roberto D’Aubuisson who was known for his death squads. More than 40,000 were killed or disappeared during his reign. According to the findings of the United Nations Truth Commission report, D’Aubuisson gave the order to his militia to assassinate Archbishop Oscar Romero, the most outspoken voice against the death squad slaughter, as reported Craig Pyes and Laurie Becklund Nieman (Foundation of Journalism at Harvard University, March 24, 2010).

THE PRO-PLUTOCRAT BISHOPS

The primary focus of the American National Catholic Conference of Bishops became abortion – a code word for a comprehensive political agenda to bring about the neo-conservative control of government. In 1989, the NCCB issued its first “Resolution on Abortion”: “Abortion has become the fundamental human rights issue for all men and women of good will….Our long and short range public policy goals include federal and state laws and administrative policies that restrict support for and the practice of abortion; continual refinement and ultimate reversal of Supreme Court and other court decisions that deny the inalienable right to life.”

The Wojtyla-appointed bishops began “a massive political campaign…to achieve religious and political control of crucial American policies and institutions, an effort which the popular press and television have virtually ignored. It was inspired by the Vatican and has been carried out over a period of years under the supervision of the National Catholic Conference of Bishops. The bishops have created the impression that they [are] a formidable political force, able to influence or intimidate presidents and other public officials,” John M. Swomley wrote in his article, “One Nation Under God…National Council of Catholic Bishops Seeks to Influence Policy” (Gale Group 1998).  

Catholic writer Timothy A. Byrnes called the bishops’ plan the “most focused and aggressive political leadership” ever exerted by the American Catholic hierarchy. He presciently noted: “This political campaign, which has been organized around the issues of abortion and certain forms of birth control, has wider implications. The ability to control political and judicial offices on one doctrinal issue can and will be used on other matters, such as aid to parochial schools to the neglect of public schools and use of welfare legislation to provide funds for the charitable activities of churches,” Byrnes wrote in his book Catholic Bishops in American Politics (Princeton University Press, 1991)

In 1998, Karl Rove was directing the presidential campaign of Texas Gov. George W. Bush. “He came upon ‘The Catholic Voter Project,’ a study of voting behavior in national elections since the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960” commissioned by Crisis magazine, a journal for neocon Catholics. “The Crisis project compared the voting behaviors of those who regularly attended Mass and inactive Catholics and found a clear distinction. Active Catholics characterized themselves as being more conservative than Catholics as a whole and, although they did not necessarily identify with Republicans, they were in the vanguard of the thirty-year Catholic march out of the Democratic Party.”

Henceforth, political polling no longer asked for only religious affiliation but also frequency of church attendance. More importantly, Republicans increasingly focused their “issues” campaigns to those sitting in the pews through mailings to registered congregants, distributing pamphlets after services and sending “talking points” to priests and pastors.  

More political operatives became aware of Princeton Professor Robert George who had designed “The Catholic Voter Project.” George was the founding director of the university’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions which studied constitutional law and politics and was funded by Opus Dei.

The 2000 Election
“The Christian Coalition and other groups worked hard for the Republican ticket….The Christian right became more active in Midwestern Republican parties. Bush won a majority of these states, but Gore carried some of the most populated, including Michigan and Illinois…. In this sense, the Christian right has been ‘spreading out’ across the states, especially in the South, Midwest and West.”
The Catholic Task Force, an assembly of wealthy and influential neo-cons, advised the Bush campaign how to target devout Catholics. Gov. Bush had photo ops with prelates, visited churches and talked about the “sanctity of life” although he had the worst record for executions of any U.S. governor. This required only minor tweaking, changing the bishops’ “pro-life” mantra into “pro-innocent-life” or “pro-unborn-life.” Bush’s Catholic outreach campaign focused on the heavily-Catholic swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois.
To help decide uncommitted Christians, Bush presented himself as the standard bearer of “compassionate conservatism.”

On Election Day, exit polls revealed “79% of the self-described religious conservatives said they voted for George W. Bush. Absent that vote, Al Gore wins the election with a 52% majority. I think there’s little question that white Christian conservatives are a permanent part of the Republican base,” Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center concluded.
The three Catholic Supreme Court justices (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas) voted with the majority in Gore v. Bush, the first of many 21^st century Supreme Court decisions that would shift more power to the plutocrats.

THE BIG PAYOFF
Five days after his inauguration, Pres. Bush attended a dinner in the home of Washington D.C. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The president of the now-renamed United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and other hierarchs also were present. “The event came on the eve of the unveiling of a Bush-administration plan to allow public funding of religious organizations engaged in assistance, volunteer work and humanitarian aid.”  

Bush created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI) by executive order, often called the greatest breach in the separation of church and state to date. Few are so naïve as to believe that charitable work doesn’t generate good will towards the giver or that some workers don’t use the opportunity to proselytize.

Daniel Zwerdling, who produced two programs on the FBCI for the Bill Moyers TV show NOW in September 2003, “found that religious groups could apply to more than a hundred federal programs that gave out more than $65 billion.” H. James Towey, the Catholic director of the FBCI, said an additional $40 billion in federal money was given out at the state level.

Towey was a guest speaker at Opus Dei’s Catholic Information Center (CIC) in Washington D.C. as posted on their website. 

Under the FBCI, taxpayers wound up funding youth programs building the next generation of Republicans since no accountability was required by the government from any FBCI recipient. “Faith-based” agencies – which mushroomed into a new growth industry – were also free to discriminate in hiring. Politicians created “community” charities which paid their campaign employees.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Denver unabashedly stated: “Through our charitable ministry, [we] seek to influence the political, social, and cultural environments in which we serve.”

The 2004 Election

“The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement” was a call to action for Republicans published in 2001 by the Free Congress Foundation, written by Eric Heubeck with guidance from the Catholic Paul Weyrich, founder of the Religious Right.

The manual begins: “This essay is based on the belief that the truth of an idea is not the primary reason for its acceptance. Far more important is the energy and dedication of the idea’s promoters … Falsehoods are not only acceptable, they are a necessity. The masses will accept any lie if it is spoken with vigor, energy and dedication.”

“No president in recent American history has taken such a strong interest in the Catholic vote as Bush. Advisers believe that in several swing states, socially conservative Catholic voters hold the key to reelection in 2004. Hence, Bush has reached out to the American bishops, and in July 2001 he went to Castle Gandolfo to meet the pope,” stated Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, in an address on March 22, 2002.

“We increased the Catholic vote the old-fashioned way. We got lists of Catholics and mailed to them, telephoned them. I think President Bush’s positions are appealing to Catholics” said Bush’s ambassador to the Vatican, James Nicholson. When Pope John Paul II canonized Father Josemaría Escrivá on October 6, 2002, Nicholson was in attendance according to the Opus Dei website. 
Catholic Sen. John F. Kerry (D – Mass.) won both the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries in January. Vice Pres. Dick Cheney went to the Vatican on January 27 to confer with Wojtyla’s then secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. What both the Vatican and GOP feared was a show of Catholic support for Kerry similar to what John F. Kennedy had received in 1960.

Polls continued to show Kerry and Bush in a very close race. Bush went to Rome on June 4 to present the U.S. Medal of Freedom to the Pope John Paul II – another demonstration that he was “more Catholic” than Kerry.

Later that month, when the U.S. episcopate met for their semi-annual meeting, they received instructions from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, second in power to Sodano, and formulator of Wojtyla’s crushing of liberation theology. Ratzinger told the American bishops “no communion for John F. Kerry” due to his support for a woman’s right to control her own body.

Meanwhile, American bishops did not criticize the slaughter of the Iraq War even after no weapons of mass destruction – Bush’s excuse for starting the war – were found in Saddam Hussein’s arsenal. The episcopate also refused to condemn Bush legalizing torture for the first time in U.S. history, such as “interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, exposure of detainees to extreme temperatures, forced standing, binding in stress positions, and severe sleep deprivation” as noted in the “Human Rights Watch Open Letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. prelates began a campaign against Kerry unprecedented in scope, vitriol and direct interference by clergy in politics. They approved a statement on June 18 on “Catholics in Political Life” that politicians who support legal abortion are “cooperating in evil.” The message went out to all Catholics in multi-media format and in technically non-partisan words that voting Democratic would jeopardize one’s immortal soul.

Bush strategist Karl Rove identified the Catholic vote as central to his long-term plan to convert swathes of traditional Democratic voters, thereby transforming the Republicans into the majority party. Throughout the 2004 campaign, Rove maintained that if Bush won the Catholic vote, he would be reelected. He was right.

The Sunday before Election Day, Pres. and Mrs. Bush attended Catholic mass in Miami. Bush won the popular vote by a little over 3 million. He carried 56% (approx. 7.9 million votes) of Catholics who said they attended Mass at least once a week while losing to Kerry among less observant Catholics according to the article “Sixty-three Percent of Catholics Voted in the 2004 Presidential Election” (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University November 22, 2004).

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

“During President Bush’s terms, income inequality grew, a trend since 1980. The Congressional Budget Office reported that the share of after-tax income received by the top 1% rose from 12.3% in 2001 to a peak of 16.7% in 2007, before ending at 14.1% in 2008,” according to the “CBO: The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2013″ (June 8, 2016) as quoted by Wikipedia.

“Economists Peter Orszag and William Gale described the Bush tax cuts as reverse government redistribution of wealth, [shifting] the burden of taxation away from upper-income, capital-owning households and toward the wage-earning households of the lower and middle classes,” as quoted by Wikipedia from “Gale, G.W. & Orzsag, P.R. (May 4, 2005) The Great Tax Shift”.

THE END OF THE WOJTYLA PAPACY

It is unknown when Pope John Paul II contracted Parkinson’s disease because it was a closely guarded secret. “During a 1996 trip to Hungary, at a time when John Paul looked extremely frail, his press secretary, Joanquin Navarro-Valls said the pope suffered from an ‘extra pyramidal syndrome,’” the Associated Press reported. “Navarro-Valls is a lay member of the conservative Catholic movement Opus Dei, an order much favored by the pope,” explained the AP. “As papal ‘spin doctor,’ he helped lead a quiet revolution to internationalize the Vatican,” the AP stated.

Whether due to illness or not, Wojtyla had become more pastoral and less political by the turn of the new century. He publicly condemned the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

As the pope became more infirm, however, he was shut off from the press. Two others became not only his spokesmen, but also “ran the Church in the final years of the late pope’s life,” Reuters reported. One was his secretary, then-Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, a close friend from Poland. The other was his secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, “a controversial Vatican power broker for more than a quarter of a century” Reuters stated.

“Sodano took a hard line against liberation theology and during the John Paul II-era sought to build a network of bishops and papal diplomats who shared his view. From 1978 to 1988 he served as papal ambassador to Chile, where he developed close ties to the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In 1999, as secretary of state, Cardinal Sodano lobbied former Prime Minister Tony Blair to allow Pinochet, who had been arrested in London after Spain had requested he be extradited to stand trial for alleged human rights crimes, to return home to Chile,” The Tablet reported.  

“During a 60-year career, Sodano was the architect of the Holy See’s foreign policy and the power behind numerous thrones inside the Church. He personally nurtured the careers of dozens of Vatican officials and diplomats. Such was his influence that it was once remarked that ‘a leaf did not move in the Vatican unless Cardinal Sodano wanted it to,’” according to The Tablet.

Pope John Paul II died on April 2, 2005, at the age of 84. President George W. Bush and Laura Bush attended the funeral services on April 8, the first and only
sitting U.S. president to attend papal burial rites.

Please read “The Opus Dei Popes: Part 2 – Benedict XVI” and “The Opus Dei Popes: Part 3 – Francis.”

(Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America)

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