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THEIR KINGDOM COME -- INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF OPUS DEI |
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14. Puffs of Pride
IN JANUARY 1968, THE BOLETIN OFICIAL DEL ESTADO IN MADRID published the following Ministry of Justice notification:
The notice was signed by the Ministry's under-secretary, Alfredo Lopez, an Opus Dei supernumerary. A few paragraphs below in the same issue, Don Santiago Escriva de Balaguer y Albas requested the rehabilitation of the barony of San Felipe. To many outsiders, the fact that Escriva de Balaguer wished to dust off an old title seemed untypical for someone whose profound humility would be mentioned twenty years later as one of his cardinal virtues. But in the eyes of his children the Father's behaviour was at all times irreproachable. The Opus Dei faithful quickly assimilated the anomaly of their Founder's seeking a 'puff of pride' with the exercising of a fundamental right. Escriva de Balaguer, moreover, was insistent that he had not made the request for his own benefit. He maintained that the title was for his nephews, the children of his younger brother, Santiago. It was said that he wished to compensate his parents [already long dead] his sister [also dead] and his brother, for the sacrifices they had made in order to permit him to carry out the Work. Thus the Father portrayed his act as 'a matter of filial piety and justice.' [1] According to research carried out by genealogists at the University of Navarra, the Marquisate of Peralta was bestowed upon one of Escriva de Balaguer's more distant ancestors who had been minister for war and justice in Naples following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The Father's claim to the lapsed title was thus given a mantle of legitimacy. The fact that so much effort and resources were invested in producing a pedigree of nobility indicated that, however much he might protest, the Father enjoyed collecting social distinctions. He had in recent years been awarded the Spanish Grand Cross of St Raymond of Penafort, the Grand Cross of Alfonso X the Wise, the Grand Cross of Isabel the Catholic, and the Cross of Charles m. But to show his modesty, we are assured that he never wore them. When an army officer congratulated him for having been honoured with a coveted distinction, he replied: 'My son, it is very important for you military fellows to be awarded one of these medals. For me it isn't. The only important Cross for me -- and I know you feel the same at heart -- is the Cross of Christ.' [2] This remark gives us the very essence of Escriva de Balaguer as he laboured in the 1960s to cut a new suit of juridical clothing for Opus Dei. The deal that he was seeking from the Holy See's highest authority was the Work's 'final approbation' as a prelature of the Church. It became his window on immortality, and it was a fixation from which, in the last decades of his life, he could not be weaned. The fixation was like a beacon that guided his manoeuvrings with the Curia. Nothing was left to chance. There was a reason -- divinely inspired, his children believed -- for everything. Only when the outsider realizes the depth of adoration paid to him by his more dedicated followers do their seemingly incongruous excuses for his outrageous inconsistencies become more comprehensible: 'The Father sought nothing for himself. He simply was fulfilling a strict family duty.' [3] To the outsider it may seem a transparent lie, but for members living in an enclosed and carefully controlled climate of a religious sect, it was not only evident but part of the divine plan whose mysteries were not always explainable. The comments which the notice in the Boletin Oficial provoked in the salons and bars of Madrid were pungent. One wag suggested that The Way by Josemaria Escriva would soon be re-issued under a new title: The Super Highway by the Marquis de Peralta. But the question remained: why did Escriva de Balaguer leave himself open to such derision? Some, of course, saw in it the act of a penitent son paying off the social debt of his father, the bankrupt shopkeeper from Barbastro. But at least two other theories were put forward. By late 1966, Escriva de Balaguer would have known from his sons in government -- particularly Laureano Lopez Rodo -- that Franco was about to designate the twenty-eight-year-old Prince Juan Carlos as' hi's successor and future King of Spain. [4] According to one theory, the Founder rehabilitated the Peralta title because he expected, or hoped, to be named Regent in the transitionary period between the designation by Franco of his royal successor and the actual coronation. It was said that with the title of marquis Escriva de Balaguer believed he possessed the three prerequisites which he considered necessary for the job: public stature, priesthood and nobility. [5] He was in direct contact with the prime minister, Luis Carrero Blanco. Moreover, in preparation for the restoration, he had met with Don Juan de Borbon, Juan Carlos's father, then living in exile at Estoril, in Portugal. [6] Another hypothesis that tickled the imaginations of some was that Opus Dei's directorate in Rome had considered attempting a takeover of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John of Jerusalem, called of Rhodes; called of Malta, as it was the only Church institution to hold the status of an independent state. Some titled Opusian gentlemen were already members of the Order and its sovereign council in Rome feared a coup d'etat. As Marquis of Peralta, Escriva de Balaguer might have thought he was eligible for the highest rank of the Maltese Cross as the Order's regulations permit only celibate knights of noblesse to become Grand Master. In addition to being recognized as a sovereign head of state, the Grand Master holds a rank in the Church that is equivalent to a cardinal and this, too, would have appealed to the newly titled prelate. But when it was learned that the Grand Master had to be a secular person, this plan was dropped. By the early 1960s some of Escriva de Balaguer's children were moving in rather rarefied spheres. Alfredo Sanchez Bella was one. He had broken with Opus Dei in the early 1940s but returned to Escriva de Balaguer's fold in the 1950s. [7] In 1949, the year after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, he co-founded with Archduke Otto von Habsburg the European Centre of Documentation and Information (CEDI), whose objective was to construct around the Spanish Borbons a federation of European states united in Christianity and anti-Communism. This sounded very much like a modern resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire over which Charles V had reigned. Like the Spanish empire of old, the envisaged Catholic federation was intended to have large-spectrum antennae in Latin America and the United States. CEDI was believed to be an auxiliary operation of Opus Dei. [8] Although headquartered in Munich, it held its annual general meetings at the Monastery of El Escorial, near Madrid, and it continued functioning throughout the Cold War. Its tentacles spread among Catholic Monarchist circles throughout western Europe. Archduke Otto, who was educated in Spain and completed his studies at the Catholic University of Louvain, reportedly became one of Opus Dei's most treasured Old Guard supernumeraries. [9] Like Opus Dei, CEDI published no membership lists, but the president of its Belgian chapter, Chevalier Marcel de Roover, was known to have close ties with the Belgian royal family. Indeed, Archduke Otto's nephew, Lorenz von Habsburg, son of international banker Karel von Habsburg, married Princess Astrid of Belgium, daughter of King Albert II. Astrid's aunt, the former Queen Fabiola, was related through the House of Aragon to the Spanish Borbon family. Professor Luc de Heusch of the Free University of Brussels, an expert on Sacred Kingship, maintained that Queen Fabiola, a disciple of Escriva de Balaguer, 'introduced Opus Dei to the Catholic aristocracy of Europe.' [10] An idea of the company CEDI kept can be gathered from the membership of a sister organization, the Pan-European Union, headquartered in Zurich. Also headed by Archduke Otto, among its members were two Belgian prime ministers, an Italian industrialist close to the Vatican, a former French prime minister, his legal counsellor, an aide to Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the secretary of Giscard's Independent Republican parry, a professor of theology at the Grand Seminary of Fribourg who was a Secret Chamberlain to the Pontifical Household, the deputy head of NATO's intelligence division, a director of West German intelligence, the Spanish ambassador to the European Community and Alfredo Sanchez Bella, who had served as Spanish ambassador to Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and, in the 1960s, Italy. While in Rome, he headed the Office of Diplomatic Information, Spain's exterior secret service for Europe. [11] Franco named him Minister of Tourism and Information in 1969. Many Pan-European members belonged to a right-wing association that had little formal structure but became known as the 'Pinay Group', after Antoine Pinay, a former French prime minister. In a sense it was broader than the Union because its participants were not exclusively Catholic and its meetings were regularly attended by right-wing Americans. These included former CIA director William Colby, banker David Rockefeller and public relations pioneer Crosby M. Kelly. But the Pinay Group was essentially a European Community lobby established to counter Marxism. It was plugged into virtually every west European intelligence service. Although it met under the auspices of Pinay, the co-ordinator for the Group was Jean Violet, a right-wing Gaullist and friend of Giulio Andreotti. [12] The Pinay Group was said to be another Opus Dei auxiliary operation, and its principal protagonists, Pinay and Violet, were variously reported to be connected with the Work. Rumours of Nazi collaboration led to Violet's arrest following the war, but he was quickly released 'on orders from above'. [13] Shortly afterwards, he offered his services to SOECE, the French counter-espionage establishment referred to in the trade as La Piscine (the Swimming Pool). He joined Antoine Pinay's entourage in 1955. By this time Violet had become close to several Opusian personalities, among them Alfredo Sanchez Bella and Otto von Habsburg. In his journeys, Violet came to know Father Yves-Marc Dubois, a French Dominican who was in charge of international relations for his Order. But Dubois represented more than the foreign policy interests of the black friars of Faubourg Saint Honore. He was described as a 'member of the Vatican's intelligence network, if not its head'. [14] He popped up from time to time as an unofficial member of the Holy See's delegation to the United Nations. When in Paris, he stayed in the Dominican chapter house at 222 rue Faubourg Saint Honore, in the Eighth Arrondissement, within walking distance of Jean Violet's apartment at 46 rue de Provence, in the Ninth Arrondissement. Dubois introduced Violet to his 'Swiss correspondent', Father Henri Marmier, the 'official' of the diocese of Fribourg and editor-in-chief of APIC, the Catholic International Press Agency based in Fribourg. Father Marmier and a Polish Dominican, Father Josef-Marie Bochenski, founded under the auspices of the University of Fribourg the Institute of Sovietology. The Institute's extracurricular activities included the running of a clandestine network that provided aid to Catholic groups behind the Iron Curtain, particularly Poland. The Institute was in part funded by what officials in Fribourg euphemistically called 'the American grant'. According to the registrar's office at the University of Fribourg, Opus Dei sent several of its members to the Institute. Another of the Institute's supporters was Violet's boss, General Paul Grossin, chief lifeguard at the Swimming Pool from 1957 to 1962. Grossin was said by some to have transferred fees owing to Violet directly to Father Marmier's 'charities' in Poland. [15] (Violet was made a Chevalier de Legion d'Honneur by General de Gaulle. He claimed to British author Godfrey Hodgson that he was in charge of covert political operations for SDECE until he retired as an active spy in 1970. [16] According to Count Alexandre de Marenches, the chief lifeguard from 1970 to 1981, Violet was 'given the heave' because he cost the French government more than any other spy on SDECE's long list of secret agents. De Marenches further claimed that Violet had been a triple agent working in addition for the Vatican and the West German BND. Other sources said that he was in fact fired because he knew too much about the sexual follies of one of France's leading ladies.) Others who attended Pinay Group meetings included Franz-Josef Strauss, head of the Christian Socialist Party in Bavaria and for a time West German Defence Minister, Dr Alois Mertes, another West German minister, and Prince Turki bin-Faisal, a Deputy Minister of Defence and director of Saudi intelligence. Both Strauss and Mertes were said to be linked to Opus Dei, though Mertes later denied it. Prince Turki's elder brothers were King Faisal and Prince Sultan ibn Abdul Aziz, the Saudi Minister of Defence. Sanchez Bella, von Habsburg and Violet were convinced that a Europe united against Communism required a strong figurehead -- e.g., King Juan Carlos of Spain -- who could act as the torchbearer of Catholic morality, and around whom the Occident could rally as a figure of wholesome fortitude. However a figurehead with all the moral fortitude in the world would be hamstrung if he lacked sufficient resources to act on the same plane as popularly elected governments. They also realized that to achieve this would require some financial cobbling of heroic proportions. A plan began to take shape at a luncheon at the Hotel Westburg in Brussels in the autumn of 1969 that was attended by Alain de Villegas, his brother-in-law Florimond Damman, a devotee of the archduke, and Jean Violet. Whether the plan was another example of pilleria by the sons of Escriva de Balaguer is open to interpretation. Although ultimately uncovered as a racket, it proved relatively profitable. Some of the funds that subsequently went missing were traced to religious works in Spain. Alain de Villegas had studied engineering at Louvain. He was an ecologist, antinuclear to the core, and believed in flying saucers. He was above all a staunch European and ferociously anti-Communist. Convinced that the world was running out of water, Villegas used to say, 'We can live without oil, but not without water.' He disclosed to alleged triple agent Violet that he had invented a machine capable of detecting ground water. Violet did not need to be told that such a machine, if it performed as claimed, could be immensely valuable to a country like Spain, whose tourist industry was hobbled by lack of water, or to Middle Eastern countries. Villegas explained that he and his associate, Professor Aldo Bonassoli, had developed a low-energy desalination process capable of transforming seawater into fresh water, and as a result of this they were developing a 'water-sniffing' machine. They claimed that their invention could determine underground structures up to depths of six kilometres. Villegas showed Violet a small-scale prototype and convinced the lawyer of its potential. As financing was needed for a full-scale prototype, Violet agreed to speak to his friend and client Carlo Pesenti, an Italian industrialist close to the Vatican, and to Crosby Kelly in New York. Crosby Kelly made no bones about his political leanings. 'I am a Rightist, Conservative and anti-Communist,' he told Hodgson. He was said to be a sometime CIA operative. He had designed and launched the sales campaign for the first Ford motorcar produced after the Second World War, and was among Robert McNamara's original 'whiz kids' at Ford. For thirteen years he had been on the board of Litton Industries. Kelly told Violet he would not invest a penny until satisfied that the invention was capable of finding water. Pesenti, on the other hand, put up some capital. Spain's new tourist minister, Sanchez Bella, placed several test sites at the team's disposal. Kelly monitored Villegas's progress. He told Hodgson that the Spanish government paid the drilling costs. [17] The search for water went on with slight success for two years until interrupted by the Yom Kippur War of 1973, which brought about an Islamic oil boycott and subsequent quadrupling of world oil prices. Villegas kept his project alive by announcing that his 'sniffer machines' could also detect oil. Pesenti was persuaded to invest additional funds. As the world geo-political equation had suddenly changed, the project was transformed into a crusade to liberate Christian Europe from dependence upon Islamic oil. Pesenti's engineers equipped a DC-3 with one of the 'sniffing' machines. Using contacts provided by Antoine Pinay, they flew to South Africa and were given government authorization to conduct tests over Zululand. A promising site was identified and drilling began, but by the end of 1975 the costs had become so heavy that Pesenti again opted out. The Zululand borehole eventually bottomed out at 6,000 metres, having broken the drill stem, with nothing more than traces of Karoo basalt to show for the millions spent in drilling expenses. By this time Violet's Spanish associates lost interest. In fact, With the assassination of Carrero Blanco in December 1973, Opus Dei's political fortunes had changed and the new prime minister swept the Opusian technocrats from government. But they had done their job well, preparing the way for a restoration of the monarchy under Prince Juan Carlos, which occurred upon Franco's death two years later. Meanwhile, thanks in part to Prince Turki, southern Spain had become a playground for Saudi royals. Madrid and Riyadh enjoyed such friendly relations that even the State Department in Washington was envious. Spain was given long-term access to Saudi oil on preferential terms. A known technique for transferring profits in international transactions is to use 'sandwich companies' domiciled in offshore jurisdictions whose laws insure strict secrecy. As the name implies, a sandwich company inserts itself between the parties to a transaction in the guise of providing a service, such as facilitating a contract for, say, 100 million tons of Saudi crude. As the crude passes from wellhead to market, the sandwich company collects a commission or passes on the merchandise to the purchaser at a marginally increased price through back-to-back contracts. The real principals of the sandwich companies are rarely known and it is virtually impossible to pierce their veil of corporate secrecy. There is nothing illegal about these operations, provided they do not infringe the laws of disclosure in the jurisdictions concerned, and vast sums can thus be accumulated without anyone outside the inner circle being any the wiser. With the Spaniards no longer interested in the Villegas invention, and Carlo Pesenti's pockets empty, Jean Violet used his counterespionage contacts to interest the French petroleum company ELF in the 'sniffing' machines. In May 1976 at the headquarters of Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) in Zurich, ELF's chairman entered into a contract with a Panamanian sandwich company called FISALMA, supposedly representing Villegas. The FISALMA contract gave ELF the exclusive use of two electronic 'sniffers' -- Delta and Omega -- for one year against payment of $50 million. ELF's chairman was no fool. He was credited with creating both France's nuclear power industry, one of the most advanced in the world, and the French nuclear force de frappe. UBS is Switzerland's largest commercial bank. Its chairman at the time was Philippe de Week, and one of its board members was the Panamanian consul in Zurich, Dr Arthur Wiederkehr. The de Wecks are a well known patrician family from Fribourg. Although FISALMA -- a company that issued from the law offices of Dr. Wiederkehr -- was controlled by Villegas, de Weck acted as its president. Tests started in June 1976. Delta came up with nothing and so Villegas proposed mounting the more powerful Omega in the aircraft. Omega found what was described as a large deposit at Montegut in the Languedoc, nine kilometres long and a kilometre wide, 3.9 kilometres below the earth's surface. Excitement was intense. Drilling began in January 1977. By April no oil had been hit, but in June 1977 ELF nevertheless renewed the FISALMA contract for another year. The Montegut borehole was halted at a depth of 4,485 metres, still bone dry. By then drilling had begun at a new site where Omega was said to have uncovered a more promising formation. ELF was persuaded in a 1978 meeting at UBS's main conference centre near Zurich to extend the FISALMA contract a second time and triple its investment. The company received authorization from the French Treasury to keep the transaction hidden from government auditors. The new payments, bringing the total French investment to 450 million Swiss francs ($150 million), was to be advanced to FISALMA by UBS in four instalments of 50 million Swiss francs each. UBS charged the French government 6 per cent interest, holding state-guaranteed ELF debentures worth 500 million Swiss francs as collateral. Present at the meeting were three members of ELF's senior management, the two inventors, Antoine Pinay, Jean Violet, Philippe de Weck and the twopriests, Dubois and Marmier. De Weck introduced Marmier as a diocesan judge from Fribourg who specialized in marriage annulment cases. De Weck said he had specifically requested Marmier's presence. What role Marmier really played was not known, but divorce between ELF and FISALMA was avoided and the new contract signed. Valery Giscard d'Estaing was then in the sixth year of his presidency. He had been discreetly following the project and was alarmed to learn that ELF had committed, drilling costs included, more than $200 million to the sniffers. He now became directly involved. The 88-year-old Pinay convinced him to attend a demonstration arranged for early April 1979. Philippe de Weck was present. The test was so negative that Giscard requested an immediate investigation and suspended further government financing. The President of the Republic was thus able in a few minutes to see through a fiasco that the managing directors of France's largest company had been unable to detect in three years of dealings with Villegas and Bonassoli. Once Giscard gave his instructions, the machines were sequestered and found to be fakes (their 'decoders' turned out to be two video cameras linked to a special-effects generator). Threatened with legal action, UBS returned 250 million Swiss francs and all of the debentures. Liquidators seized Villegas's fleet of 'sniffing aircraft' parked in a top-security hangar at Brussels International Airport. By then the fleet included a Boeing 707, a Fokker 27 and a Mystere 20 executive jet for transporting personnel. Together with the sale of other assets and the attaching of bank accounts, ELF recouped another 41 million Swiss francs. Villegas and Bonassoli, whose only degree was a diploma qualifying him as a television repair man, were never prosecuted. Albin Chalandon, the new chairman of ELF, told a parliamentary commission: 'We were dealing with madmen rather than crooks. They faked their machines, but they believed in their invention. Villegas was a mystic on the outer edge of normality, and Bonassoli lived in an unreal universe that made him believe in his own make-believe.' They had, in other words, struck a gusher of intellectual pilleria. As for the Pinay Group, it continued to meet and produce confidential reports that were circulated to selected government ministries and intelligence services in several countries. Enquiries have shown that no detailed accounting for the ELF moneys paid to FISALMA was ever rendered. About $2.8 million was known to have been used by Villegas to finance the construction of a new church for an organization called Foyer de Charite in the south of France. Dedicated to Holy Mary Mother of God, the church was inaugurated in June 1979. Villegas also donated $52,000 to build a Catholic workshop for Indians in the Choco region of northern Colombia. Through a foundation created in Liechtenstein he helped finance Catholic aid projects in Niger, Rwanda, Upper Volta and Spain totalling another $7 million. The aid projects in Africa included the drilling of water wells and purchase of a small fleet of ambulances, leaving one to conclude that the bulk of the Liechtenstein trust money went to Spain. FISALMA also maintained an account at the lOR (the Vatican bank) which allegedly was used 'for investing in secret political schemes.' [18] ELF got back $100 million. But what happened to the remaining $50 million? As with Matesa's $180 million it had gone astray through the use of cleverly drafted contracts and fast-service sandwich companies, the junk food of transnational finance. These two ventures alone -- Matesa and FISALMA -- meant that more than $200 million in Spanish and French ratepayers' money could be sloshing about in the international monetary system, free of controls and ready for use in any number of causes, as for example defeating Communist insurgency in Latin America or taking control of a strategic European bank. _______________ Notes: 1. Vazquez de Prada, Op. cit., p. 348. 2. Ibid., p. 319. 3. Ibid., p. 348. 4. This occurred on 22 July 1969, when Franco announced that he had chosen Juan Carlos. grandson of Alfonso XIII (who died in February 1941), to succeed him. 5. 'The Double Life of Saint Escriva -- Names, Titles and Ambitions', Cambio 16, Madrid, 30 March 1992. 6. Arriba, Madrid, 13 May 1967, and El Pensamiento Navarro, Pamplona, 17 May 1967. 7. Ynfante, Op. cit., p. 353; also Artigues, Op. cit., pp. 38 and 149. In a lawsuit brought by the German branch of Opus Dei in 1985 against Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, publishers of the Aktuell Rororo Yearbook, lawyers for the Prelature claimed inter alia that 'Alfredo Sanchez Bella is not a member of Opus Dei and was not a member when he supposedly occupied [public office].' A decision against Welt Aktuell required that the 1986 edition of the yearbook be withdrawn from sale. However, Opus Dei admitted to the author on 30 October 1994 that Alfredo Sanchez Bella had indeed been a member, though he 'disconnected himself from Opus Dei before holding a fixed political system [sic] or a position in Spanish public life: According to Maria del Carmen Tapia, he rejoined the Work as a supernumerary after marrying in London. The Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia in its 28 June 1995 edition claimed Alfredo Sanchez Bella was still a member. 8. Jean-Pie Lapierre, 'Puissance et rayonnement de l'Opus Dei', Revue politique et parlementaire, Paris, September 1965. The article claimed that CEDI was an instrument of Opus Dei. This was repeated by Le Vaillant, Op. cit., p. 151. 9. 'La Maffia blanche', Golias No. 30, Lyon, Summer 1992, p. 168. 10. Professor Luc de Heusch discussion with the author at University of London lecture on 'Monarchy, Spiritual and Temporal', 14 October 1993. 11. Ynfante, Op. cit., p. 353. 12. Antoine Pinay was a member of Marshal Petain's wartime National Council until the closing days of the Second World War when he helped General de Gaulle to power. He served as prime minister in 1952, under the Fourth Republic. He died on 13 December 1994, aged 102. Various sources claim that Pinay was an Opus Dei supernumerary, most recently Nicolas Dehao in 'Un errange phenomene pastoral: l'Opus Dei', Le Set de fa Terre No. 11, Paris, Winter 1994-95, p. 139. 13. Pierre Pean, V, Fayard, Paris 1984, p. 41 14. Ibid., p. 49 15. Ibid., p. 50. 16. Interview with Godfrey Hodgson at Oxford, 11 September 1993. 17. Sniffer article (unpublished) by Godfrey Hodgson, p. 24. 18. Pean, Op. cit., p. 212.
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