In 1998, a prematurely silver-haired, baby-faced priest named C. John McCloskey was dispatched by Opus Dei, the secretive right-wing Roman Catholic group, to Washington, D.C., to minister to some of the world’s most powerful men. He arrived at the Catholic Information Center, which the organization runs, on K Street, the lobbying district of the nation’s capital, to act as a kind of lobbyist for the nation’s soul. Before being ordained, the priest had spent a few years on Wall Street at Citibank and Merrill Lynch. And even after taking his vows, he retained his dealmaker’s personality.

From his office at the CIC (which bills itself online as “the closest tabernacle to the White House … providing sacramental access to busy Washingtonians for seven decades”), to the capital city’s private clubs and white-linen restaurants, McCloskey — known to the flock as “Father John” — set about networking. In a few years, he succeeded in converting some of the most influential American conservatives of his time, among them Robert Bork, columnist Robert Novak, Kansas senator Sam Brownback, Larry Kudlow, Newt Gingrich, as well as lesser-known figures like right-wing publisher Alfred Regnery. Fox News host Laura Ingraham credits Opus Dei–connected lawyer Pat Cipollone with her conversion.

Father John is gone — removed from his post by a sex-abuse scandal, he died last year — but the CIC is still on K Street. It is still run by Opus Dei (Latin for “the Work of God”), which is not focused on ministering to the masses (and if it were, it would be failing spectacularly, as more Americans are leaving the Catholic Church than joining it, by as much as four to one). Instead, it is focused on marshaling the people who have various forms of authority over the masses (Opus Dei reportedly calls them the “intellectuals”) to its various revanchist causes. The group targets, and attracts, people like Donald Trump’s current running mate, J.D. Vance, a convert to conservative Catholicism by way of Opus Dei–connected clergy and influencers.

Wait, Opus Dei, you say? That menacing group of self-flagellators to which albino assassin-monk Silas belonged that lies at the center of the web of conspiracies in The Da Vinci Code? In the Tom Hanks movie, Paul Bettany played Silas. The group was admittedly fictionalized to up the drama in the thriller, but it does, in fact, exist and has for nearly a century, one of the more exotic of the many factions within the vast Catholic Church. It would seem to be precisely the kind of mysterious clique with tentacles into the elites that would pique MAGA’s conspiratorial fever. But the CIC, which doubles as the Opus Dei office in Washington, and the national network of wealthy and powerful right-wing Catholics affiliated with it are among the most effective forces in MAGA world and the American Christian-nationalist movement. It is allied with Protestant Evangelicals in many of its goals but is more hierarchical and often more institutionally organized. Opus Dei can marshal centuries of intellectual heft of the Church behind it.

A great deal has been written this year about the resurgence of the Catholic right in America. This is not President Biden’s liberal Catholicism. In surveys, American Catholics as a whole are firmly in the mainstream in their political opinions, from contraception to divorce, gay marriage to abortion rights. But there is an elite vanguard on the rise that holds much more conservative views — many of these elites have some association with Opus Dei — and has sought to influence policies that might be enacted in a second Trump presidency. The now-infamous Project 2025 was cooked up under the auspices of the Heritage Foundation’s conservative Catholic and Opus Dei–connected president, Kevin Roberts. All three of the Trump-appointed Roe-wrecking Supreme Court justices (two of whom are Catholic) got there thanks in part to the tireless dark-money-funded efforts of the right-wing Catholic Leonard Leo, a major CIC donor who has also become the go-to conservative disburser of anonymously donated big bucks to political causes. The three other justices in the Dobbs majority are hard-right Catholics. Beyond the high court, current and former Washington power lawyers and influencers have Opus Dei connections. The current CIC board chairman, Brian Svoboda, is a partner with the big-shot law firm Perkins Coie. Former board members include Trump-administration attorney general Bill Barr, Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and Kirkland & Ellis partner Thomas Yannucci. Opus Dei affiliates sit on the board of another giant in the right-wing political-donor network, the Bradley Foundation (which is currently pouring money into the rightist stream, including far-right Trumpist groups run by Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk).

Details of the Opus Dei network in the American capital are a significant part of a new, deeply researched book by British financial journalist Gareth Gore, Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church (Simon & Schuster; October 1). Gore traces the history of the cultish organization from Franco’s Spain through its expansion globally and, finally, to the group’s rising influence in Washington and the American conservative movement. (Opus Dei declined to comment for this piece, although it had expressed preemptive concern about the book when its publication was announced.)

Opus Dei runs colleges and elite private schools around the world as well as institutions like the CIC, all designed to attract and mold the influential. It has residences where its most dedicated members — “numeraries,” some of whom are ordained priests, as was Father John — live under strict regimens tailored to ward off the sensual temptations of the secular world even while encouraging participation in it. The residence in Manhattan houses numeraries in a 17-story building on 34th Street called Murray Hill Place, which has separate entrances for men and women.

Officially, Opus Dei has 3,000 members in the U.S., and Gore was told 800 of them are in Washington. Not all are numeraries living in the residences; there are “supernumeraries” who live among the rest of us. (There are also those called “cooperators” who are not officially members but are associated with the group and its various activities.) The names of numeraries and supernumeraries are not public unless the members want them to be. And Gore says the numbers don’t reveal the extent of the group’s influence: “When I first started writing the book, I became obsessed with establishing who is a member. I decided to give up on that. It is a rabbit hole down which you will be hunting forever.” What he found is that “under every stone, you find a whole ecosystem of Opus Dei affiliates.”

Opus Dei has seen its sway rise and fall in the Vatican over the decades, with the more traditionalist popes, including John Paul II and Benedict, more sympathetic. Recently, the more progressive Pope Francis has tried in........

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