“I still feel the pain in my knees from scrubbing the men’s bathroom for hours”: Opus Dei would have circumvented immigration controls to transfer minors to other countries

A group of women denounced Opus Dei to the Vatican for alleged labor exploitation, abuse of power and conscience. At least 41 women from Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia indicate that their documents were even withheld when they were minors.

One of the complainants, identified as Lucía Giménez, 56, was in charge of promoting the rest of the women who worked for the order in South America, Italy and Kazakhstan between 1974 and 2015, according to the Independent.

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Opus Dei receives a complaint of labor exploitation by 41 women

Giménez assures that, with only 16 years of age, he worked more than 12 hours in the order and without receiving pay. “I still feel the pain in my knees from scrubbing the men’s bathroom for hours,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press (AP).

The woman from Paraguay joined the order in the 1980s in her country, with the promise of receiving a higher education to improve her living conditions and studies, but the only thing she was trained for was cooking, cleaning and other domestic tasks in the centers, residences and retirement homes of Opus Dei.

For 18 years, Giménez was an Auxiliary Numerary, as women dedicated to housework and who comply with celibacy are called. The complainant assures that she washed clothes, cleaned bathrooms and assisted members of Opus Dei during working days longer than the eight hours established by the labor law and that breaks were limited to the hours of eating and praying.

All these tasks were carried out without receiving any payment. “I never saw a bill in my hands.”

Along with the other women, she commented that: “They endured because they had a total dedication to God.” Meanwhile, they assure that they all come from humble families and that they were “taken away” from them between the ages of 12 and 16, taking them to other countries, even circumventing immigration controls.

However, all that the women expose in the complaint, the Opus Dei (Work of God in Latin), assure that they were not notified of any complaint by the Vatican and that they contacted the legal representative of the complainants to “listen to the problems and find a solution to possible requests”.

They assure that Opus Dei controlled their relations with the outside world

Another of the complainants, identified as Beatriz Delgado, who worked as an Auxiliary Numerary for 23 years, in Argentina and Uruguay, assures that they were frightened with spiritual evils if they did not comply with the supposed will of God and that they controlled their relations with the outside world. .

“They convince you with the vocation thing, with that ‘God calls you, God asks you for this, this is what God wants from you, you cannot fail God’… They hooked me on that side,” Delgado said. .

For her part, Alicia Torancio did not stand up to the Numeraries when they forbade her to make friends with other fellow Auxiliaries. She was also not allowed to read her diaries before a superior checked that she had no news of sexual content and she was forbidden to visit her family without the company of another member of Opus Dei.

“They kept you emotionally immature. The whole external world was something harmful,” said the 46-year-old woman, who also said that she has marks on her legs caused by the hair shirt, an accessory with metal spikes that fits on the thigh and that members of Opus Dei used as penance.

The 41 women demand financial compensation from Opus Dei, which recognizes the abuses committed and demand a public apology.

However, Josefina Madariaga, director of the Office of Communication and Press of Opus Dei, assured that there is no such complaint in the Vatican and referred that, “all the people who have worked and work in the work receive remuneration. All”.

Although he recognized that “in the decades of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, the entire society dealt with these issues in a more informal or familiar way. Thank God we have all learned as a society that these types of issues have to be handled within another framework. Opus Dei has made the necessary changes and modifications to accompany the current law.” (YO)

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