Argentine prosecutors accuse Opus Dei leaders in South America of trafficking and labor exploitation – Associated Press

Argentine prosecutors have concluded that there are grounds to open a criminal investigation against the highest authorities of Opus Dei in South America between 1983 and 2015 for the crimes of human trafficking and exploitation of labor against at least 44 women recruited by the religious order to perform domestic tasks in their homes.

According to a document seen by The Associated Press, prosecutors have asked a federal judge to summon to testify those who served during that period as vicar or regional advisor to Opus Dei from Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and from Bolivia: Carlos Nannei (1991-1997), Patricio Olmos (1998-2014) and Víctor Urtizarrazu (2014-2022). They also seek to question the regional secretary in charge of the women’s section of the order, Gabriel Dondo, who held this position until 2015.

Opus Dei – Work of God in Latin – was founded by Spanish priest Josemaría Escriva in 1928 and has 90,000 members in 70 countries. The lay group, greatly favored by St. John Paul II, who canonized Escriva in 2002, enjoys a unique status in the Church and reports directly to the pope. Most members are lay people, men and women with secular jobs and families who strive to “sanctify ordinary life.” The other members are priests or celibate lay people.

Following a complaint filed in 2022, the team of prosecutors opened an investigation which concluded that from the early 1970s until 2015, “people occupying different positions within Opus Dei set up a structure dedicated to the recruitment of at least 44 women, most of them girls and adolescents, to be subjected to living conditions comparable to servitude.

Opus Dei in Argentina has denied the accusations.

“We categorically deny the accusations of human trafficking and labor exploitation,” the office of the Prelature of Opus Dei in Argentina said in a statement, adding that to build this accusation, “the training received by some of the women in the group and the freely chosen vocation of the digital assistants of Opus Dei are completely taken out of context. This is a completely false accusation.

Prosecutors say Opus Dei selected girls and teenagers from low-income families, usually from rural areas far from the organization’s centers of activity, and that they were recruited “under the promise of receive training and improve their employment prospects.

“Once admitted, they were subjected to a regime of ‘spiritual, professional and vocational training’ and, if they showed a vocation as digital assistants, they were assigned for life to domestic tasks in the centers of Opus Dei, both at home and abroad. abroad,” they said.

The investigation focuses on four cases that correspond to the crime of human trafficking under current Argentinian legislation.

Some of the plaintiffs testified to AP in an article published in November 2021 in which they said they worked in “blatantly illegal conditions,” including working without pay for more than 12 hours, without breaks except to eat or pray, without registration in the social services register. Security system and other violations of fundamental rights.

Their identities were preserved in the prosecutors’ resolution.

Most of the women requested an exemption, believing that the physical and psychological constraints they were subjected to during their years of service were becoming intolerable. They say they were left to fend for themselves, without money, and that many required psychological treatment after leaving Opus Dei.

A federal judge must now decide whether to grant prosecutors’ request to call the former vicars to testify.

Opus Dei Argentina reaffirmed its commitment to fully cooperate with justice “to clarify the facts and resolve the situation in a fair and transparent manner.”