John and I are on break now who are on a secret mission, and this before all new Mission Implausible episodes come out this fall. But for now, we'll bring you one of our favorite past episodes and we'll soon be launching our YouTube channel. See you there.
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and.
In war zones.
We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive our adversaries.
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy theories large and small.
Could they be true?
Or are we being manipulated?
This is Mission Implausible.
This is part two of our conversation with Gareth Gore. Gareth is a financial journalist who's written the book Opus, The Cult of Dark Money, human trafficking, and right wing conspiracy inside the Catholic Church. He's been telling us about the secretive Catholic sect known as Opus Day. I have a question, so we all are perceiving this as a somewhat cult like structure. I certainly felt it was a cult when I was there. But usually a cult is got one figurehead who's benefiting from it, or a family
that's benefiting from it. These founders are long since deead. Who are the beneficiaries? Now, who's the head of this? I mean there is a head of Opus stay in Rome who runs the entire thing. But like many cults, there's a worship of the founder. So everything that the founder said and wrote down is now taken as gospel. But yes, I mean in effect Escrevard, this priest who's been dead since nineteen seventy five, in fact, he's still
in charge. I mean, there are all kinds of horrendous and abusive practices that he wrote down, that he stipulated in his writings, and I think the modern organization realizes that many of these practices had no place in society and in fact are really damaging to the reputation of Opus's day globally. Because of this cold like worship of the founder, they're unable to question anything he said or did. And recently it was discovered that Olpus's day has allegedly
been involved in the trafficking of young girls. From recruiting these girls in places like Argentina and Algeria, the Philippines and entrapping them in the organization as effectively unpaid servants for the elite and the organization and federal prosecutors in Argentina have recently formally accused the organization of engaging in human trafficking and serious labor abuses, and there's going to be trial this year or next with four OPS Day
priests standing trial. I think the organization realizes that those practices have no place in today's society, but they're unable to stop doing it because that's what the founders said should be done. So to answer your question, he's dead, but Scrivarre is still in charge. His message of infiltrating society at the very top is what drives Opus Day still to this day.
We've mentioned that Opus Day seems to have people in senior positions in Washington been the right wing in the Supreme Court and Leonard Leo and Bill Bara in this sort of thing. I think we're suggesting they may have some undue influence in right wing politics, but also in our politics. Evangelical Protestants seem to be unusually supportive of the right wing in the United States. It would seem
that they would be natural not enemies, but competitors. Is there something about Opus day in that it's your private relationship with God or something that makes it similar to evangelical Protestantism, or what's the relationship there, if any.
Just before I answered that, I think I should be clear as well that there's no implication in my book call in anything. I'm saying that this head of Opus, Dane Realm that he sat the issuing orders out to Learned Leo or the Supreme Court justices or whatever. That's not the way it works. It's not that kind of conspiracy. The conspiracy is simply to recruit from the elite of society and have the right people in positions of power so that we can push forward this reactionary agenda and
rip up any kind of progressive advances. That's the conspiracy. These people not being told specifically what to do. You need to vote this way, or you need to push this It's about creating the right conditions. It's about creating a network and having the right people rise up and
to help each other out to advance this cause. And now, to get back to your question, from time to time they get into bed with like minded groups and individuals who have nothing to do with Opus Day and who have nothing to do with even with the Catholic Church.
At one stage in the late two thousands, the kind of senior Upper Stay members in the US obsessed with the idea of stopping same sex marriage from going into law, and so OPA Stay basically teamed up with the Mormon Church to push to get the called Proposition eight onto the ballot in California, which was a major step to slowing down the ratification of same sex marriage. Ultimately, they failed, and people in the US can now have same sex unions.
But yeah, I mean, you know, that's one example of them teeming up with like minded groups which fall outside of the natural comfort zone.
Good did you grow up in the Catholic Church.
I did.
I'm just wondering if you did.
No, I didn't. I was raised, as I guess, a Cultural Church of England member. I went to a church and England school. We said the Lord's Prayer every morning, and we prayed and we sang hymns. But I don't think I really believed in of it.
I did grow up Caretholic, not that oh PA state the Dominicans, but within the Catholic Church are the elements of the Catholic Church. We like to talk about this day, right, and we snicker about them.
So this again goes back to the cult like worship of the founder. So the founder, I think was a bit of an unstable individual, as many of these cult leaders are. His father had fallen into bankruptcy, if the family had fallen on hard times, his father had died, and he is the eldest son. It was all on his shoulders to lift family back to the buddh all days and being rich and wealthy again. And so I think he was carrying around quite a little burden and
he was struggling. But his way he over ate, the way that he dealt with the things a lot of his problems was to basically punish himself, to punish his body. And this is something that people self mutilation is not that far from self flagellation, which is what's happening here. I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, and but my interpretation is that this is the way that he dealt with his problems. So he would do it into two ways. And you mentioned one of them, the scyllis, which is
basically like a barbed wire. Often usually you were around around the thigh, but couldn't be used to You can wear it around other parts of the body as well, and it's made up of these kind of like claws which dig into the skin. The idea is that it's meant to be very uncomfortable. It's that breaks the skin maybe, but it's just it makes it uncomfortable to sit or to do anything, and it's meant to remind you of the suffering of Christ. So that the Founder was a
big wearer of the scillys. He would wear at four hours on end, sometimes around his thigh, often around his waist, which kind of goes back to his discomfort around his weight and his issues around weight. But he also used to use this other thing called the discipline, which is a whip. Now, a normal discipline would be made of kind of cord or rope, and maybe you'd have kind of three lashes and you'd take off your shirt and
you would hit yourself over the back. And again the idea is that it's to remind you of the suffering of Christ. But for it's the Founder of OBErs Day, that wasn't enough. He pimped up his discipline so he would add razor blades to the rope so that when he whipped himself he would cut into his back, and those around him were worried about his psychological state. His mother and his priest even begged him to stop doing this.
The walls would be spattered with blood after he'd had these sessions, but Escrevar made it compulsory for the numery members, the celibate members of Opus Day, the kind of the elite members of OPA's day, to continue this practice. So many of the teachers were at the school in the Heights where John attended. Many of those teachers would have been numery members celibate members of Opus Day, and they are still to this day expected to do those two
forms of corporal multification. So then they're expected to wor the sybis for two hours a day, you're in the afternoons, and they're expected to whip themselves using the discipline, presumably without the razor blades, for a period, usually on a Saturday afternoon. That's still ongoing to this day. And those are the kind of the elite members, the normal members, the supernomeries, the people that live out in the innormal homes with kids or whatever. They've been couraged to do.
These things too, but there's not the same level of expectation or control to ensure they do it. But yeah, this is very much still alive and well within the organization.
Going to the conspiracy aspect of this show, the word that is most commonly associated with Opus Day is secretive. Why be secretive? Why not be open about what you believe and what you're trying to accomplish in this world like other organizations are.
Again, it always comes back to the founder. He was a conspiracy theorist himself. He realized that he was building this army and he saw it as an army. He described it in his writings as an army. He knew he was building this secret army in a hostile environment, so it made sense to him to keep it flanderstin. Yeah, like he specifically told his members to not disclose their membership to anyone else, to even their their friends or family.
He was obsessed with the idea of we need to keep this below the radar because there are enemies of Christ add and as well as infiltrating the upper echelons of society, he also tasked his followers with and I guess u cia guys will enjoy this but he tasked them specifically with collecting information on the enemies of Christ. He saw this as a battle and the open stain membership.
It was a gorilla army that would infiltrate society and use their positions there to one push through the agenda, but two also to collect information on the enemies out there and people that might be that might stop them from pushing through this throat. Yes, these documents were written in the nineteen thirties. These documents are held up as
like tablets that Nausi's brought down from the mountain. This is still the way the organization thinks about itself and about its membership today in the twenty first century.
Just hold on for a short break can be read back.
So Gith, no discussion of Opustay is complete without at least touching on Reverend John McCluskey, right. He was the American sort of patron of Opus day, bringing it into the US, building it up. Charismitic guy. He converted New Gingrich and Larry Kudlow and Senator Sam brown Beck and a number of other people. A huge money raiser, and in the end he ended up with charges of sexual exploitation. I think a payout of a million dollars was made
to a number of young women. I wonder if you could bring us through some of the charges of sexual assault, but of the charges against against McCluskey and OPUS Day in general, you're absolutely.
Watch and describing as sexual assault.
So yes, in.
The early two thousands, he groped one of the women who came to him for the spirituals and olpusta member in fact, and she reported the issue to OPU Stay and they did nothing, and she threatened to sue. And when she threatened to sue, Opus Stay decided to smuggle this guy out of the country. They basically sent him off to England to live in the OLPAH Stay Center in London where he couldn't be served with papers or
arrested or whatever. And there was a good reason for that, and that was because mc mccoskey had become the face of OLPUS Day in Washington, d C. And as you say, he'd recruited vast numbers of the Conservative Republican elite to OPA Stay. He'd enticed all of these people into the OLPAH Stay network. People looked up to him. He was frequently on places like meet the press. He was the kind of the go to guy in central Washington. He
was confessor to all of these powerful people. The last thing Olpasta needed was for him to be embroiled in this sex gangle, and so they shipped him off to England. Meanwhile, they agreed pay off with this woman, I guess got her to sign a non disclosure agreement. They paid her almost a million dollars. The whole story went away, although it was part of the agreement. He was no longer allowed to be back in DC, so he went off initially to Chicago, but then they shipped him out to
Silicon Valley to recruit out there in Silicon Valley. And this whole thing went away until a few years later and the woman she'd understood as part of the agreement with elpus Day that he would no longer be allowed to go out and preach and he wouldn't be allowed to be alone with women, And she discovered that he was being allowed to carry he was carrying on doing that in his ministry, and so she decided to basically go public and to expose what had happened. So, yeah,
are there influential people in other places around the world. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, almost every word that elpas Day operates, it's managed to penetrate, to a greater or lesser extent, the kind of elite of society. Going back to the sixties and seventies. There are all kinds of rumors that they were involved in the WHO in seventy five in Chile. They were kind of part of the efforts to destabilize the Allende government in the early seventies. There these days in places like Poland, Spain,
of course, they're extremely influential Hungary. I understand that they've got pretty big influence there as well. Any places like the Philippines, I think they over the years have really managed again to penetrate the kind of the Filipino political elite. One thing listeners should realize is that this is not
no ordinary organization. If you're interested in joining up, as Dave you think, you know, if you think it's a great organization you want to sign up, you can't just go on to the website and punching your details and get a membership card posted through the post. It's not possible to request membership. You have to be invited in so they decide who they want to be part of the organization and they go after them, they caught them, they groomed them, and they pushed them into membership. And
again that tells you what you need to know. This is it's not a club that's open to anyone. It's a club specifically for targeted individuals who are in a position to shape society.
Guys, you're a financial investigator and journalists, you talk about others either conspiracy or conspiracy theories in the financial industry.
As you guys will now, behind every kind of conspiracy, you need money. And so banks throughout their history have been at the forefront of making stuff happen around the world. Whenever there's a coop or destabilization efforts or whatever they might be around the world, the money's going to come
from somewhere. I mean, we were just talking before we started recording about whole BCCI scandal the late eighties, knowing nineties what people discovered that this bank had been used to funnel money to the Taliban, to pakistanis into all over the place. There's a great book called Billion Dollar Whale, which is about a huge scandal in Malaysia where billions were siphoned by this guy and some of the money was used to finance the film The Wolf of Wall for Ball three.
So opusta a it he has goals? What are its goals through the US? Because you know, we see Project twenty twenty five which has a huge amount of influence of opus Sta people leading it and guiding it forward. So what would a future US look like if opus Stay gets its way.
I don't think Opista has any specific goals. Its goals kind of shift and change according to whatever's happening. So in the early nineteen thirties in Spain, for example, I guess the goal would have been the elimination of the Communists and the Masons and the Jews, and the kind of the re establishment of the church's proper place in society.
Nick Church great again, but also make.
Conservative reading of the Catholic faith great again. So I think these days, obviously there's the kind of hot button issues like abortion and same sex marriage and contraception and all that kind of thing. But I think really the goal for opus day is to have is what we were saying Earlieres, is to have the right hinder people, our kind of people in positions of power making the right decisions, the right moral Catholic decisions about these things,
and so there's no kind of policy agenda. It's about creating the right conditions. It's about creating this network and feeding this network with conservative Catholic doctrine, and then having those people go out and make the right decisions for themselves based on the reading of the Bible. I think that's the goal. Yeah, I think it's in a good position to do that following the last election, as you
were saying. Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, the Architective Project twenty twenty five, this blueprint for a second Trump administration. He's a regular at the OLPA Stay Center in Central Washington. He gets his spiritual guidance from an open state priest, and you can be rest assured that OPU Stay's pretty happy with most of the agenda that he's going to be pushing. In the last Trump administration, I think there were five members of the cabinets who
were closely allied to OPA Stay. I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar number, if not more, in the second. In the second administration, you might assume, Okay, they don't really believe in these particular policies.
They're all in it for power. Half of the people believe it, and half of the people are seeing it as a train that can ride to power. But my impression of the people that I was surrounded with was no, they're doing this because they're true believers and they specifically see the world as either good or evil.
Absolutely.
I think if you listen to some of the speeches given given by people like Leonard Leo and by Kevin Roberts, it's very clear that they see this as as a war. It's us versus them. It's not just a cultural war. I mean they they see this as a religious war. It's a war against atheism, it's a war against progressivism. They truly believe they're on the right side of history and that they're following the teachings of Christ. I think the Pope might have something to say about it.
I think there are wide.
Sections of the Catholic Church, including some of its most senior people, who recognize that OPUS Stay is a problem, and that many of the practices in OPA Stay, things like human trafficking, the targeting and grooming of children, the way that it controls and manipulates its members, that these are horrendous abuses that need that have no place inside the church. So I've got great feedback from sections of the church. Opus Day Opusta's reaction has been really interesting.
It's decided to normally, when in this day and age, or maybe in B nine, maybe these days this doesn't happen, but certainly in recent history, whenever an organization was presented with horrendous scandal or abuse, the reaction is, oh, my goodness, this is terrible. We're going to launch a huge investigation. We're going to get to the bottom of this. We're going to ensure that this is all sorted at, and we're gonna absolutely going to get We'll get to the
bottom of this. Opus Day's reaction to my book and to the allegations I make in my book has been to stick the finger and fingers in their ears and go la la.
La la, la, la, la la lao.
They just don't want to engage with the book in any way. They have monted this disinformation campaign. They've tried to smear me and say basically, I'm a liar. I've tricked them into all of these kind of things, all completely false. They've created this kind of alternative narrative that the book is all about this one Spanish guy and it's I'm besmirching his character and it's an assault on this poor guy that's not true. This is then exposed
a about topper s Day. You know, they basically don't want to engage with the book because to engage with the book would involve them having to answer pretty serious questions and would involve them having to admit to decades of use and manipulation, and would involve them having to admit that many of these practices are ongoing today as well. Thank you guys having me on.
It's been a pleasure.
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Cipher, and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible is a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.