Opus Dei

Pope John Paul II, in his recent Apostolic Letter on the coming Jubilee, has issued an energetic call to “penance and reconciliation,” encouraging everyone to make an “examination of conscience.” As one who has just assumed an important responsibility, do you see anything about Opus Dei that needs to be changed? Anything needing correction? New messages to pass on to the faithful you have been entrusted with?

Father Jose María Casciaro, Associate Professor of Semitic Philology at the University of Madrid, died in Pamplona on March 8. He had lived in Madrid with the founder of Opus Dei during a considerable part of the years between 1939 and 1942. His recollections of those years crystallized in a book published in 1998, whose title “It’s worthwhile” is even more relevant today.

“I phoned a friend to tell him I had discovered a treasure which I wanted to share with him.” Testimony of Patrick Utomi, a lecturer in business studies and a consultant in Lagos, Nigeria.

Interview with Roger Bissonnette, car mechanic and school bus driver, Besner & Bissonnette Inc. He is married with two adult children.

What is Opus Dei doing to promote the welfare of young people in the struggling countries of Africa so as to open more hopeful horizons?

New York is legendary for its fast pace of life. Like everywhere, people here have trouble finding time to reflect on the meaning of life, or on what it takes to live a fulfilled life. But that is exactly what a group of college students and young professionals did recently at Schuyler Hall, an Opus Dei center in Manhattan, at a seminar entitled “The Examined Life: Philosophical Reflections on Ordinary Life.”

Are the members of Opus Dei supposed to do outstanding work and seek to be the best? Does one have to stand out in order to be a saint?

How does the Opus Dei Prelature, given the current condition of the world, influence events, particularly in the Church?

From the doctrinal point of view, is the Work traditionalist or traditional? And how does that fit in with Vatican II?

Is Opus Dei a conservative institution?