Opus Dei may have to seek new status under canon law, says spokesman...

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ROME – A leading member of Opus Dei and its spokesman in the UK has suggested that in light of revisions made recently by Pope Francis to the nature of “personal prelatures”, a status Opus Dei has held under Church law since 1982, the group may be forced to seek another category that better reflects its inner identity.

“If, in the end, it turns out the Church decides that lay people cannot form part of a prelature, then Opus Dei cannot be a prelature and it would have to find something else,” said Jack Valero, spokesman for Opus Dei in Great Britain.

“Maybe this figure has to move on and then Opus Dei also will have to move on. We will see what happens in the future,” he said.

Valero was speaking in a Sept. 9 video posted to X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, in response to a Sept. 6 Times of London piece regarding a dispute over an Opus Dei-operated shrine in Torreciudad, Spain, which Valero dismissed as “totally inaccurate”.

Among other things, the Times article asserted that Pope Francis recently issued a decree “reducing Opus Dei’s special status and weakening its relationship with its followers”. The reference was to a motu proprio issued by the pontiff in August amending two articles in the Code of Canon Law governing personal prelatures, a category currently occupied only by Opus Dei.

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