Rick Santorum and Opus Dei

by Edd Doerr

Is Rick Santorum a member of Opus Dei, the secretive, ultraconservative outfit founded by a Spanish priest in 1928 that came to practically run Spain during the last years of the Franco dictatorship? The outfit exposed, sort of, in Dan Brown's popular novel and film The Da Vinci Code? We may never know. Opus Dei, a "Personal Prelature of the Catholic Church", discourages its members from revealing their connection with the outfit that is so bizarre that most Catholics would have nothing to do with it.

What we do know is this. In early 2002 then-senator Santorum led a delegation from the US to Rome for a week long celebration of the Spanish founder of Opus Dei. Santorum sent two of his sons to The Heights, a males-only private prep school in Potomac, Maryland, connected to Opus Dei. The school's web site says that "The spiritual direction of The Heights School is entrusted to Opus Dei." Other bigshots who have sent their sons to The Heights include former GOP senators Chuck Hagel and Mel Martinez and former FBI director Louis Freeh.

Santorum's extremist views on contraception are essentially those of Opus Dei.

On January 14 the 150 or so evangelical leaders meeting in Texas to find an alternative to Willard Romney agreed to coalesce around Santorum.

(Lest there be some misunderstanding, let me make clear that all of the GOP presidential aspirants strike me as less suitable for high office than the Three Stooges.)