Pope Francis once again reduced the privileges that Opus Dei enjoys in the Catholic Church and relegated it to the category of a public clerical association with the power to incardinate clergy, that is, to incorporate them into its organization together with lay personnel. The pontiff promulgated the previous week a new motu proprio, a kind of papal decree, which modifies the legal framework that regulates personal prelatures (what until now was Opus Dei), and which directly affects this institution of Spanish origin with headquarters in dozens of countries. He does not mention it in his text because it is the only organization that until now had this status.
Personal prelatures are Church institutions (they disappear with Opus as they were known up to now) that carry out pastoral or missionary works in favor of different regions or various social groups, so they are not defined by a geographical territory. determined, like the dioceses, but by the figure that is in charge of it. At this time, that person is Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, the organization’s prelate. Nor were they under the authority of any bishop. No other canonical institution had this privilege, which many bishops opposed in 1982 when the very conservative Pope John Paul II granted it to the Opus, then directed by Álvaro del Portillo.
Opus Dei is one of the most conservative institutions of the Church, which will now be compared to other public clerical associations, such as the Community of Emmanuele, dedicated to charity work and evangelization among young people and migrants. In this way, you will lose your exclusive status.
Regarding the participation of the faithful in the institution, the Opus will be more controlled, since the Pope establishes that the laity who belong to these entities “can dedicate themselves to the apostolic works of the personal prelature”, but “the way of This organic cooperation and the main duties and rights related to it will be conveniently determined in the statutes”. In addition, Francisco recalls that the lay faithful have their own parish priest and ordinary depending on the address where they reside.
The Holy See has yet to approve the new statutes of the Work — as Opus Dei is also known — on which the institution is working following instructions that the Pope gave it last year.
Now, Francis recalls in the apostolic letter signed this August 8, in which he also reviews the origin of the prelatures from the Second Vatican Council, that the objective is to put the apostolic constitution into practice Preach the Gospelwhich was published in 2022, so that the competence over personal prelatures passes to the Dicastery for the Clergy, the Vatican body that supervises priests around the world, on which public clerical associations also depend.
These modifications come while Opus Dei is in the process of adapting to the first changes proposed the previous year by Francisco, included in the Constitution Preach the gospel and in the motu proprio of To protect charisma. From the institution they have limited themselves to ensuring that they will study “what consequences these modifications may have for the legal configuration of Opus Dei (…) in a climate of communion with the Holy Father.”
Francisco had already reduced the power and independence of the Work within the Church last year. At that time, Bergoglio already decreed that the Work would cease to depend on the Department for Bishops and would report to the Department of Clergy, an entity that will be in charge of evaluating, and not Opus Dei itself, as until then, “issues that in each case corresponds to face”, such as the formation of its priests or “eventual controversies”. The institution will also have to submit an annual report to this department on its situation and the “development of its apostolic work.” Before, the Work only had to deliver a similar document every five years to the Congregation for Bishops. The papal document also degraded the figure of the leader of the institution, who will not be able to “be distinguished” with the position of bishop and will not be able to show off the ring or the episcopal vestments.
Currently they are part of the Prelature, present in more than 60 countries, around 92,900 people, of which about 2,095 are priests. The institution specifies that, of the total number of faithful, “around half are women.”
At present there are six public clerical associations in the Church with the power to incardinate clergy: the clerical association of the Community of Emanuele, the Fraternity of Diocesan Worker-Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Missionary Fraternity of Santo Egidio, the Fraternity of Saint Martin, the society Jean-Marie Vianney and the Opera di Gesù Sommo Sacerdote, to which the Work will be added.