Untold: Opus Dei - Opus Dei, Ep. 3: Snow on the mountaintops

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

Over the past decade, elite universities have become home to a network of influential conservative think-tanks fighting against the “woke secular creed”. Meanwhile, at Opus Dei student centres, the next generation of ambitious leaders hear similar moral teachings creep into partisan politics. Is it just ideas that link the two – or more?Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's spring. 2022. Demonstrators on both sides of the abortion divide converged on the Supreme Court today. Abortion saves lives. This follows a political report that the justices are poised to overturn the right to abortion that the court established nearly a half century ago. An early draft of a historic Supreme Court decision had just leaked. It suggested that Roe v. Wade was about to be overruled,

and with it, the constitutional right, to an abortion. The document marked first draft and dated February 10th was written by Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court's most conservative members and a frequent critic of Roe versus Wade. The argument was technically over how you interpret the law, but the result was one that religious organizations had been chasing for decades. Like a lot of Americans, Katie Chenoweth was following the news online. Chenoweth is an associate professor of French at Princeton, I saw a tweet come out by a colleague of mine, Robert George, who teaches in the politics department, and he was talking about the decision.

Professor Robert P. George is a legal scholar. The New York Times once called him America's most influential conservative Christian thinker. He submitted a brief in the Supreme Court case, and his specific arguments were actually cited in the leaked abortion decision. George's tweet wasn't anything special. But all of this sent Chenoweth down a rabbit hole. Many Supreme Court justices, senators, presidents have come out of Princeton. So it's an institution where political power has been historically and continues to be sort of cultivated. Everyone from Sonia Sotomayor to Ted Cruz to Michelle Obama. But I thought, well, who is this person who's my colleague, just a few buildings over on the Princeton campus,

who I don't really know much about. George holds a number of academic titles at Princeton. But outside of his university office, he also has a role in a small, more quietly influential organization on campus, one that's not officially part of Princeton, but that's housed in an elegant three-story building right at its center. The Witherspoon Institute is a self-described think tank that sits about a block away, five-minute walk from the center of campus.

The building is Primrose Yellow, with a wooden veranda and a manicured lawn. On its website, the Witherspoon Institute says it provides intellectual and moral formation. It runs seminars for students tackling contemporary debates through classical and Judeo-Christian traditions. Educational programming around marriage, family, sexuality, promoting abstinence, anti-LGBQ, anti-trans, trying to insist on extremely rigid and traditional gender roles. You might not have heard of Witherspoon itself, but the people involved with the Institute, like George,

have had significant political influence. Chenoweth dug into the backstory. I wanted to figure out more about that history, and it didn't take very long until that led me to Opus Day. George is not an Opus Day member. But back in 2003, he helped set up Witherspoon with a man named Luis Thayez. Teyes was a numery member of Opus Day.

But not just that. He was actually one of its senior U.S. officials. And I thought, well, that seems significant that a think tank would be founded here at Princeton by someone who was until he arrived. at Princeton, one of the national directors of Opus Day. That must mean that this is a significant place for them. And then it didn't take long to see that almost everyone, and certainly everyone in a leadership position at the Witherspoon Institute,

was giving talks at Opus Day centers or had other demonstrable ties to Opus Day. And then I found that the last time that the prelate of Opus Day made, a pastoral visit to the United States, which I believe was in 2019. The prelate, that's the global head of Opus Day, who'd come over from Rome. These visits are a big deal. And one of the presentations, during his visit there was a presentation by scholars from the Witherspoon Institute, including Robbie George. But on the Witherspoon's website, there's no mention of Opus Day anywhere.

The prolet of Opus Day visits the United States, you know, something like once a decade. It's a major event. The prelate is not doing anything that is not directly related to Opus Day. And so I said to myself, oh, the Witherspoon Institute seems to be a de facto work of Opus Day that in no way discloses itself as such. Restrictive abortion laws were rolling out across U.S. states. Campus politics were intensifying. and Chenoweth was mapping connections between the ascendant conservative movement and Opus Day.

They're not being transparent about what their aims are and they're banking on the fact that, you know, 18-year-olds coming into these programs can't see that. Chenoweth says that if Opus Day has a hidden influence at universities, that matters, because she thinks we should know who's behind the big ideas and big debates that are shaping society. And what I found was that it wasn't just that primrose yellow building at Princeton. It was much bigger than that. In conservative networks on campuses across the country, Opus Day just started cropping up everywhere.

So what was it trying to achieve? And why was it being so secretive about it? People deserve to know not only who's funding these programs, but also what the goals, and the ideology motivating the program are. The problem is that there are many former members of Obis Dei who have talked about their experience that make it clear that Ovis Dei runs much less a religious organization

and in many respects much more like what we're accustomed to calling a cult or a high control group. From the Financial Times, this is Untold, Opus Day. Episode 3, Snow on the Mountaintops. Oh, this is so interesting. I am on the homepage of the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education website, and I'm looking at this photo on the cover page. That's Jack. You met him in the last episode.

He left Opus Day recently, after decades as a numery, meaning a celibate member. There are numeraries sprinkled throughout this photo. Jack spent most of his adult life in Opus Day. And on the website of the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education, or Feehee for short, he recognized a lot of his Opus Day peers. Feehee was established in 2012 to take the Witherspoon model nationwide. The men behind the idea were the same ones you heard about earlier. Luis Tejas, the senior Opus Day numerary,

and Robert George, the Princeton Legal Scholar. Teyes, who's known as a bit of a charismatic networker, has been the driving force. Over the past 10 years, under the Feehee umbrella, a constellation of think tanks have popped up beside other elite universities, like Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Columbia. They're all independent non-profits, but as I spoke to Jack, we sifted through the websites of these institutes across the country,

looking at their director's connections to Opus Day. He did join Opus Day as a numerary, and I did live with him. Well-known numerary, kind of regarded as a rock star. I believe he's a numerary, much older numerary, out in California. In fact, every single institute in the Feehee Network has directors who are Opus Day members. According to Feehe's website, their mission is to renew elite universities, and form tomorrow's leaders.

Jack and I looked at the website's About page. You click on the Learn More button. Nowhere do you see a mention of Opus Day. As he's reading this with me, Jack looks kind of anguished. He's almost wincing. Their website is completely generic. The only thing I am walking away from

when I look at their website is we have a presence at elite universities. You have absolutely, no idea of what their political point of view is, much less who's behind it. Their political point of view matters, because these think tanks don't just shape students' minds, but also fund research that provides the intellectual backbone for policy arguments. During his time in Opus Day, Jack heard several people from the Feehee Network give talks at Opus Day centers about their work, like from the Austin Institute, a Feehe think tank at the University of Texas.

had a gentleman from the Austin Institute who had published a study regarding outcomes of children raised in same-sex households versus outcomes of children raised in heterosexual households. And of course, the results of the study were that children from same-sex households did not flourish, that outcomes were much worse. That study would go on to receive widespread criticism for from social scientists, who questioned its data and methodology. Regardless, it continued to be cited in federal courts debating bans on same-sex marriage, and the gentleman from the Austin Institute, who's actually now its president,

recently testified as an expert in a court case over medical care for transgender youth. He told us that he is not an Opus Day member, that his work stems from his own intellectual interests, and that the think tanks in the Feehe network are run independently. But for Jack, the way these institutes were talked about within Opus Day made him uncomfortable. There were a little alarm bells going off inside my head that this was intellectually dishonest. Academic studies with conclusions already in place. Promoting academic institutes that are in pursuit of fixed conclusions. These think tanks have successfully brought together.

prominent conservative voices, the kind of people who meet with government officials, even presidents, and weigh in on network news. They've helped lay the groundwork for a movement looking to revive traditionalist Christian values in American society. And their importance in this conservative movement is clear from their funders. Much of their income comes from anonymous conservative donor pots, like the Bradley Impact Fund, which funnels millions to pro-Maga groups. Earlier this year, after an overhaul by President Donald Trump, the National Endowment for the Humanities gave Feehee $10 million, one of the largest grants in the agency's history.

But what's barely been reported on is how this key conservative network was orchestrated in the first place. And it's a story, Jack told me, that goes back to Opistay's founder, St. Jose Maria Escriva. So Escriva, he was very keen on Opus Day having a very strong influence in academia, because this is how you change the world. Students had always been at the forefront of Opus Day's growth. Ascriber's first center in Spain was a university residence, and in the U.S., the strategy

was the same. They wanted to go to the universities because they wanted to try to bring people who would be influential in the general culture into closer contact with the Lord. This is a video from Opus Day's YouTube page. In the 50s and the early 60s, a number of wonderful people joined Opus Day, a large number from Harvard and MIT. And these young people, in a sense, were a backbone of the development of Obis Day. I think those were grace-filled years when these young people came close to Opus Day and very quickly joined.

Ascriver thought universities were failing young people. Irreligious hotbeds that nurtured minds but neglected some. souls. He wanted to change that. So one way he would express it is an image he would use a lot is he would say that we are like the snow on a mountain top that melts and when it melts it trickles down the mountains and waters the valleys below. So we are the intellectual elite. We are the spiritual elite. We have the truth with a capital T. We have the truth. The only truth that can save. And according to Jack, that was the call that Opus Day Numerary Luis Teyes was answering. Spent a lot of time with Luis Tejas and some other people who had been involved with Veehee.

I mean, this didn't just happen overnight. This started more than 20 years ago. He talked about how he worked on the Regional Commission in New York City, and he perceived that there was a lot of pressure or encouragement. from the prelate to start a university in the United States. Those are stories that Luis would tell frequently. Opus Day already has several universities around the world, like a ESA business school in Spain.

But Tejas had another idea for its expansion in the United States. There was some pushback to the prelate in Rome because there was an awareness of how expensive and difficult it would be to start a university in the United States. So the idea developed over time, and Luis was the way he tells it, he was on the cutting edge of this idea that we need to have institutes and think tanks

at these various universities. So rather than everything being concentrated in one institution and one location, we can impact institutions all over the country. After dinner at Opus Day get-togethers, Jack says Tejas held court, recounting stories about Feehe's early days. He didn't just go rogue and go out on his own and do this.

He had discussions with the prelate of Opus Day himself about these ideas. When you dig into the financial records of these think tanks, you can see how Tejas' plan played out. There's an American non-profit called the Clover Foundation, which distributes Opus Day's funds across the world. Tears left his role at the Clover Foundation to launch Witherspoon, and Clover gave him financial backing. In fact, over the past 25 years, the only organisations Clover has ever given money to that aren't official Opus Day projects are the Witherspoon Institute and related initiatives by Tears and George. So Opus Day isn't only contributing personnel to these institutes. It's also contributing funds.

From Jack's perspective, what this shows is that Opus Day is using the think tanks to advance its worldview, without having to show its hand. They're hiding the man behind the curtain at these institutes. The goal here is to have that broader impact on society, to change the discussion inside the universities, to change the discussion about what? To change the discussion specifically about the family, about marriage, and about gender.

That's what Feehe is trying to do. The idea of a religious group wanting to influence education or society isn't unusual. So why were Opus Day being so secretive about it? If someone is being very secretive about something, I think the natural question to ask, first of all, is why are they being so secretive about it? This is Margaret Doran. If they think that Opus Day is a great influence, why is this something that you feel you need to, to disguise when you are interacting with outsiders.

20 years ago, Margaret was a young freshman at Princeton. She describes herself as a conservative Catholic and worked at the Witherspoon Institute in its early years. Back then, Witherspoon's primrose yellow building was waiting for a fresh look of paint. Margaret would sometimes check on the construction work with Teyes. She liked and respected the Witherspoon founder. He'd end up as a guest at her wedding.

But Tejas made her nervous, too. I don't know if I ever saw him laugh. He was very serious. He's also tall and cuts an imposing figure. So I found him, and many others did as well, quite intimidating. Though he was never someone to raise his voice, he was also not someone that you wanted to irritate in any way. We often somewhat affectionately referred to him as the godfather.

because we saw him as the person who operated behind the scenes, kind of secretly pulling a lot of strings. Margaret never became a member of Opus Day, but she attended its activities for years. And at the time, as part of this community, she learned how it looks like secrecy to us actually looks very different to Opus Day. I never even thought about the fact that every single person

who worked there was both Catholic and involved. an Opus Day. When I worked at the Wetherspun Institute, if you had asked me, is the Wetherspoon a Catholic organization? I would have said no. And if you had asked me, is Wetherspoon Institute affiliated with Opus Day? I also would have said no. And I would have meant it 100%. Even though, again, every single person associated with it at that time was both Catholic and an opus day. I would say by and large, most of these people don't see themselves as, oh, I'm here at Wetherspoon carrying out the agenda of Opus Day. No one thinks that way.

I tried to get Teyaz to tell me what he thinks. But he said he didn't want to convey his thoughts because they are often misunderstood or distorted. Robert George also declined to comment and Feehee did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Opus Day insists Witherspoon and the Feehee Network are independent that they're a personal initiative of Teas and others.

All Christians are called to live out their faith to advocate for Christ's message in society. And they view this as no different. That's what I think the issue is here. Opus Day doesn't see or doesn't want to see, the problem. Listen to what this Opus Day priest said on a podcast recently. He's based in California and is one of the group's go-to personalities for public appearances. Saint-Nose-Marie I used to say, to do and to disappear.

Do and if nobody even knows that you. you're doing even better. That's why sometimes we're accused of being secretive. And it's not that we're secretive, is that we don't want to be seen because we want people to see God, not us. So if Opus Day is doing, if we're doing our work,

you're going to see a lot of people doing wonderful things. With Opest Day backing them up, giving them all the spiritual resources, all the spiritual direction and everything, and they are the ones who are being seen, and we're not. Even being here with you, on talking about this, I'm almost breaking the rules, so to speak.

For some Opus Day members, the organisation does just provide spiritual resources, spiritual direction, and encouragement to do regular prayer. But many other people I've heard from in this podcast described Opus Day dictating where they live, what they do, and their roles in a coordinated network created to expand its reach in America. So to me, that doesn't really sound like personal work. It sounds like an institutional campaign. I think that the spiritual direction Opus Day provides is inherently controlling a manipulative.

I think the vast majority of people in Opus Day are well-meaning. They're just trying to be good Catholics, and they think this is the way to do it. But again, that makes it so difficult to change course. Jack believes there's another. explanation for why Opus Day keeps its presence in these think tanks hidden. When he was a member, at times even living with some of the men who founded these institutes, what started to unsettle him was what he saw as a much more strategic motive for Opus Day's lack of transparency.

Because it allows for a broader reach, it allows for Opus Day to cast a wider net to be less threatening to the students and the faculty who they get to be involved in these things. I think this Feehee initiative, all the people who have willingly associated themselves, that's wildly successful because these very smart and intelligent, conservative-leaning faculty in these various institutes all around the country would be absolutely horrified to see the man behind the curtain. If Opus Day made its presence more explicitly felt and known, it would change the conversation.

And Opus Day knows that. Because Opus Day has received a lot of scrutiny in the past for the sort of behavior you've heard about on this podcast, allegations that its guidance becomes control, that its intense devotional practices become abusive, and that its social views are discriminatory. In his years inside Opus Day, Jack started to feel that its public face was not always quite the full picture, that there was always another agenda lurking out of sight.

This mode of operating is just quintessential Opus Day. For the last hundred years of Opus Day's existence, this way of operating, of sanitizing messages, of sanitizing external presentation, so as to be able to draw people in, you're welcomed, you're loved-bombed, you engage in interesting conversations with interesting people, and next thing you know, you've been drawn into something. So we can talk about money, we can talk about the personnel involved in these institutes, but as someone who was in Opus Day for so long, nothing bears the stamp of Opus Day more than the sanitized way these institutes are presenting themselves to the world.

Eventually, Jack decided it was time to leave Opus Day. day. I didn't really put words at the time to the discomfort I felt about what I was hearing, but I felt the cognitive dissonance. I know that. And because you're inside a certain worldview and you're inside a certain life, the brain does a lot of work to kind of beat it down. The words where I'm articulating to myself that this is gross, like that came after. Jack left Opus Day because of the unstated agendas inside the organization. So what was it like for those outside Opus Day, encountering it as eager young students on their campuses?

You have the directors of the centers just casually stopping by on campus. The numeraries who are students of the university are constantly engaging with prospective people to come to activities. This is Connor, though that's not his real name and he'd rather not say, what university he attended. I just remember walking in had seen this comfortable house compared to my sterile, dingy dorm. It felt very welcoming. And I remember thinking it was beautiful.

It felt like family. That's honestly how it felt. As Connor spent more time at the Opus Day Center by his campus, he started to see some patterns. Social events, dinners, and trips led to further invitations, to talks where high-profile people in Opus Day's next, network shared their views. And in those talks, discussions of spirituality bled into ideology.

The talk, which is given by a numerary, is where things start to get more political and talk more about, like, culture and needing to influence the culture. And I think that's kind of one of the code phrases and bridges that they use, is this idea that we need to fight against progressive culture. and then that's linked via the culture war in the U.S. to the political sphere. Connor was attending university, just as anti-woke campus politics were exploding. The Opus Day Center presented itself as a place that prepared students to become hardworking young professionals. But it became apparent to Connor that it was also a big part of the heated ideological battle taking place on campus.

even if it wasn't explicit about it. I'll be very clear. Opus Day would never say you can only vote for a Republican. You can only support conservative policy. Instead, it's always, you know, we need to be fighting against the progressive cultures, these woke ideologies, this DEI gender ideology. Opus Day wasn't the only group driving this reactionary sentiment. It was part of a movement.

But Conner realized that in Opus Day's case, it was looking for a certain discretion in the students that got involved. I remember there was someone who, a really good guy, but he was kind of little too involved with the official religious channels of the university. They want people whose first persona is that they're going to be successful in their career. Then does people secretly have this religious life under it? So there were definitely people that were very strong targets. They say, oh, it would be really great.

If you guys are friends, you're friends with this person. Would you invite him to this? Or do you think he'd be interested in attending if we had this event? The friends of his that Opus Day wanted to meet, Connor said, all had a similar profile. They're quote unquote, good guys. Solid, hardworking, attractive enough, almost without exception, white. I spoke to many people who had been involved with Opus Day at university. And like Connor would tell me, they say Opus Day was creating a pipeline, a club,

hardworking students who could be directed towards certain ambitions. Opus Day is more than just a group of people who pray a lot. It heavily revolves around social structure, social order, your professional life, your career, your LinkedIn. I mean, I've heard directors say, oh, you need to talk to this and this person. He's a friend of Opus Day about a job. Oh, you should reach out to this person. They're a great student, really involved the center.

You should reach out to them and see if they've ever worked for you. Opus Day is a worldwide fraternity or sorority, depending on which side you're on. For some students, that networking was part of the appeal. But Conner started to question the culture at the center, the way it turned into a partisan hive mind. In 2020, it became impossible for Connor to ignore when he watched the Opus Day members he knew at college

declare the elections stolen from Trump. They weren't concerned with truth, they weren't concerned with justice, they weren't concerned with honesty, which ironically were all things that my university claimed to be all about finding. Instead, they were about blindly believing and supporting whatever brought them to their goals. And they knew that a Trump administration was going to benefit them and their goals. Connor wasn't prepared to make those sorts of concessions.

He ended up splitting from Opus Day. I want the best for Opus Day. Every single person's everyday work can bring them to holiness. I believe them. I support the connections and family atmosphere they can bring to a large, confusing college campus and new college students. But it's just about how does it happen in a way that's transparent, ethical, and really truly allows freedom, not just. saying they have freedom when they really don't. Because in his time at the Opus Day Center,

Connor felt that he lost his freedom of conscience, the freedom to choose how to live out his Christian faith in society. Instead, he felt Opus Day's spiritual network was captured by political ideology. Connor stayed in touch with his peers from the center. He saw their updates on social media, and he watched as those who'd been primed by Opus Day took on roles in the American right wing.

I mean, a lot of the people I knew work at the Heritage Foundation. That's a pretty big one. They're the ones that have the most connection with Project 2025 and the Trump administration. Project 2025 is the well-known playbook for the Second Trump administration, published by the Heritage Foundation. There was a very concerted overlap between people involved Focus Day who came from or had connections to Washington, D.C. And a lot of the people that were most involved in the activities were the people who had the

highest political ambitions, the ones that were most involved, the conservative, right-wind, religious think tanks. Opus Day wouldn't answer questions on the record for this podcast. It's previously said it doesn't have a political agenda. But by now, I knew there were lots of things that Opus Day said that in reality were much more complicated, that its stated intentions often led to quite different outcomes. So if this was what we'd seen in academia, what did Opus Day look like in Washington? If you view the conservative push as a military, Opus Day is providing support to the foot

soldiers who are making these changes and going out there and pushing for these policy changes. That's next time. We were the closest tabernacle to the White House. They're fashioning the narrative for the wider culture now. And yet you want to pretend that you represent all of Catholicism in the United States. They all work together in these universities, think tanks, government positions, and they're all part of this extremely insular and controlling religious group. You don't actually know in these organizations who is in charge, who is really pulling the strings.

If you want to share a tip in relation to this podcast, please get in touch at antonia.cundi at ft.com The reporting for this series was by me, Antonio Kandi and Persis Love. Written by me, Josh Gabbott-Doyant and Persis Love.

It was produced by Josh Gabbat Doyon and Persis Love. Original music was by Breen Turner, mixing and editing by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, script editing by Matt Vela, and the fat-checking was by Simon Greaves. Our executive producer is Tofer Forehead,

and the FT's head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks to Nigel Hanson, Madison Marriage, Kallim Shibber, Helen Worrell, Miles Johnson, Marine Saint, Joe Miller, Katie Bevan and Paul Murphy. Thank you to the many sources who share their stories with us for this series. And thanks for listening.