The Pillar reports that “Pope” Leo XIV received the leadership of the personal prelature Opus Dei on February 16, 2026, stating that the reform of its statutes “continues in its study phase and that no publication date can yet be foreseen.” The article details the ongoing canonical restructuring initiated under “Pope” Francis, which shifted Opus Dei’s oversight from the Dicastery for Bishops to the Dicastery for Clergy and removed the requirement for its prelate to be a bishop. It also addresses recent criminal allegations of human trafficking and exploitation by former members in Argentina, which Opus Dei denies, claiming the women freely chose their vocation after an initial educational phase. The prelature emphasizes its identity as a predominantly lay institution, with over 90% lay members, and its mission of “holiness in their ordinary lives, especially through their everyday work.”
This entire narrative—from the reform process to the abuse allegations and the institution’s self-understanding—represents a profound rupture with Catholic tradition and a capitulation to the naturalistic humanism condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. The so-called “reform” is not an update but a systematic dismantling of Catholic religious life in favor of a lay-centric, secularized model that places “ordinary life” and “work” at the center of sanctification, thereby reducing the supernatural to the natural. The abuse scandals are the inevitable fruit of a structure that has abandoned the clear hierarchical, sacramental, and ascetical framework of the true Church, replacing it with a psychologically manipulative system that confuses formation with indoctrination and vocation with institutional capture.
The Invalid Pontiff and the Nullity of the “Reform”
All actions of “Pope” Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) and his predecessor “Pope” Francis are absolutely null and void from the outset, as they are the acts of manifest heretics who have ipso facto lost the papacy. St. Robert Bellarmine, whose teaching on a manifest heretical pope is definitive, states: “A heretic is not a member, therefore he cannot be the head of the Church… a manifest heretic cannot be Pope.”(De Romano Pontifice, II:30) The 1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 188.4, provides: “Every office becomes vacant by the mere fact… if the cleric… 4. Publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” The public, persistent, and manifold heresies of the conciliar sect—from “Pope” John XXIII’s “aggiornamento” to Bergoglio’s “synodality”—constitute a public defection from the faith. Therefore, the “motu proprios” of Francis and any directives from Leo XIV regarding Opus Dei are devoid of all legal and canonical force. They are the acts of private individuals usurping the Chair of Peter, and their “reforms” are merely the internal restructuring of a schismatic body, the “conciliar sect,” which has no authority to govern the Catholic Church.
The “Lay Protagonism” Condemned by Pius IX and Pius X
The core of Opus Dei’s identity, as presented in the article, is its emphasis on the laity’s “protagonism” in the Church’s mission. Msgr. Ocáriz is quoted: “Maybe the protagonism the [Second Vatican] Council wished for the laity still has a long road ahead.” This “protagonism” is a direct import of the modernist errors condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors and by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu.
The Syllabus condemns:
– Error #19: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church.” This is precisely the spirit of reducing the prelature’s governance to a “charism” rather than hierarchical authority, as Francis decreed.
– Error #33: “It does not appertain exclusively to the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction by right, proper and innate, to direct the teaching of theological questions.” The Opus Dei model, where lay numeraries direct the formation and spiritual direction of other laypeople, inverts the divinely instituted hierarchy.
– Error #45: “The entire government of public schools… may and ought to appertain to the civil power.” Opus Dei’s vast network of schools and universities run by laypeople embodies this error, subjecting Catholic education to secular management and pedagogical principles detached from the sovereign authority of the Church’s teaching office.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili, condemns the modernist proposition #54: “Dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy… are merely modes of explanation and stages in the evolution of Christian consciousness.” The entire Opus Dei project—a “personal prelature” with a novel canonical structure focused on lay “organic cooperation”—is a living embodiment of this condemned error. It treats ecclesiastical polity as a flexible human construct to be “updated” according to the “needs” of the times, rather than a divinely established order.
The Naturalistic “Holiness in Ordinary Life” vs. the Supernatural End of Man
The article states that Opus Dei “aims at holiness in their ordinary lives, especially through their everyday work.” This is a subtle but deadly reduction of the supernatural purpose of the Church. It echoes the modernist error condemned by Pius X in Lamentabili #25: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities,” and #26: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief.” Holiness is presented not as the theological virtue of charity, which orders all actions to the ultimate end of union with God in heaven, but as a functional, practical excellence in secular occupations.
This stands in stark contrast to the unchanging Catholic doctrine. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, on the feast of Christ the King, teaches that Christ’s kingdom is “primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters.” He quotes Christ: “My kingdom is not of this world.” The encyclical explains that those who belong to Christ’s kingdom “prepare themselves through repentance, but cannot enter except through faith and baptism.” Holiness is not achieved by “everyday work” per se, but by performing that work with a supernatural intention, in a state of grace, and in conformity with God’s law. Pius XI warns that when “God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Opus Dei’s focus on “ordinary life” and “work,” while omitting the non-negotiable prerequisites of repentance, faith, baptism, and submission to the entire law of God, is a secularized, Pelagian reinterpretation of sanctification. It is the “cult of man” condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus Error #58: “All the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure”), now baptized with religious language.
The Abuse Allegations: The Fruit of a Supernatural Vacuum
The allegations from Argentina describe a system of “exhausting working hours without receiving a salary,” “psychological manipulation,” “discipline through punishment,” forced celibacy, severed family ties, and administration of psychiatric medication. Opus Dei’s response is a bureaucratic, naturalistic defense: it speaks of “formation,” “voluntary choice,” “reaffirmation of desire,” and “healing offices.” This entire discourse is devoid of the supernatural categories essential to Catholic religious life.
Where is the language of vocation as a gratuitous call from God? Of religious profession as a binding vow before God? Of obedience as submission to legitimate superiors in Christ? Of asceticism as a means of penance and union with the crucified Christ? The prelature’s defense reduces everything to human psychology, institutional procedures, and “mistakes.” This is the direct consequence of its theology. If holiness is found in “ordinary work,” then the boundary between a religious institute and a secular corporation becomes blurred. The “assistant numeraries” are described as performing “domestic tasks… as their profession.” This is not a religious life; it is a form of consecrated lay employment, a contradiction in terms. The alleged “indoctrination” and “rigid belief system” are the natural outcome of a system that has replaced the objective, hierarchical, sacramental authority of the Church with a subjective, charismatic, and institutional authority that demands total commitment to the “work” of the prelature.
The true Catholic religious life, as lived before the conciliar apostasy, was governed by the clear norms of canon law, the authoritative direction of superiors holding potestas jurisdictionis, and the ascetical framework of the evangelical counsels (poverty, chastity, obedience) lived as a means of salvation. The alleged abuses in Opus Dei—the control, the psychological pressure, the exploitation—are what happens when you strip the religious life of its supernatural purpose, its clear hierarchical structure, and its ascetical rigor, and replace it with a vague “call to holiness” in the world. It becomes a human project, susceptible to all the abuses of any totalistic human organization.
The “Personal Prelature”: A Canonical Innovation of Modernism
The article explains that Opus Dei is “the first and as yet only personal prelature in the Catholic Church in 1982 — a category created in the 1983 Code of Canon Law.” This is a key piece of evidence. A “personal prelature” is a conciliar invention, designed to accommodate the “universal call to holiness” in a way that dissolves the traditional distinction between the hierarchical (clerical) and the charismatic (lay) elements of the Church. It creates a juridical structure where laity are “organic cooperators” with a prelate, but without being incorporated into the hierarchical structure of the diocese. This is a direct attack on the doctrine of the Church as a perfect society with a divinely instituted hierarchy (bishops, priests, deacons) who alone possess the power of orders and jurisdiction.
The pre-Vatican II Church, as taught by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis Christi, understood the Church as the “Mystical Body of Christ,” a hierarchical society. The laity are members, but they are not co-governors or co-teachers with the hierarchy. The idea that a layperson can have “organic cooperation” in the governance and spiritual direction of a prelature is an absurdity. It is the “democratization of the Church” condemned by the Syllabus (Error #54: “The Roman pontiffs have, by their too arbitrary conduct, contributed to the division of the Church”). Opus Dei’s structure, with lay numeraries running houses and directing formation, is the practical implementation of this condemned error.
The Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
The most damning aspect of the entire article and the Opus Dei model is the systematic silence on the supernatural. There is no mention of the sacraments as the primary source of sanctification. There is no mention of the state of grace, the necessity of mortification for penance, the final judgment, or the absolute primacy of the salvation of souls. The focus is entirely on “work,” “formation,” “healing,” “conflict resolution,” and “institutional perspective.” This is the naturalistic religion of the conciliar sect, which Pius X identified as the “synthesis of all heresies” in Pascendi Dominici gregis. It reduces religion to ethics, ethics to psychology, and the Church to a human organization dedicated to “making the world a better place.”
Pius XI in Quas Primas declares that Christ’s reign must extend to “all relations in the state” and that rulers must “issue laws… conformable to the commandments of God.” Opus Dei’s model, by concentrating on “sanctifying ordinary work” without demanding the explicit, public, and legal subordination of all social orders to Christ the King, is a capitulation to the secularism condemned in the Syllabus (Error #77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State”). It teaches Catholics to be efficient, dedicated professionals, not militant subjects of Christ the King who must work to restore all things in Him.
Conclusion: A Symptom of the Conciliar Apostasy
The “reform” of Opus Dei under the antipopes is not a correction but a final step in the conciliar revolution’s project to create a “Church of the people” that mirrors the secular world. It replaces the hierarchical, sacramental, ascetical, and doctrinally rigid Church of Catholic tradition with a flexible, lay-led, psychologically-oriented, and doctrinally ambiguous institution. The abuse allegations are not an anomaly but the logical outcome of a system that has lost its supernatural soul.
The only “reform” that can save souls is the total rejection of the conciliar sect and its entire novus ordo. The Catholic faithful must flee these “structures occupying the Vatican” and their appendages like Opus Dei, and adhere solely to the unchanging Faith of the pre-1958 Church, led by those bishops and priests who have never recognized the heretical antipopes. As Pius XI taught, true peace and order flow only from the public reign of Christ the King. Opus Dei, with its privatized, professionalized “holiness,” is a barrier to that reign, not its herald.
Source:
‘No end date foreseen’ in reform process as Opus Dei leadership meets with Leo (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 18.02.2026