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OPUS DEI, the conservative Catholic organisation, has paid a rare and fulsome tribute to Gianmario Roveraro, an Italian banker who was found murdered last week, chopped into pieces beneath a motorway bridge. The statement is as close as the group’s secretive policy allows to admitting that the pious financier was a member of the movement. The kidnapping of Roveraro, whose remains were found on Friday after he was cut up with a chainsaw, has intensified the scrutiny of Opus Dei and echoed a scandal over the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, “God’s Banker”, who was found dead under Blackfriars Bridge...

WARSAW, Poland — Poland could be Europe's first "red state". "New evangelization"It was the late pope's fervent hope that the intense spirituality of his native Poland would spark a "new evangelization" of Western Europe. During most of his papacy, there was scant sign of that happening. But more recently Poland has emerged at the fore of a fledgling movement to restore Christian values to Europe. Beginning in 2003, the Polish government led the push — ultimately unsuccessful — to include some reference to Christianity in the new EU constitution. Aleksander Kwasniewski, the reformed communist who was Poland's president at the...

THE controversial religious organisation lambasted in the blockbuster movie and book The Da Vinci Code has revealed that membership inquiries have soared in the past year. The film and book portray Opus Dei as a murderous and secretive cult within the Roman Catholic church. Despite this negative view, membership applications have increased tenfold. The film, based on the book by Dan Brown and starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, centres on the controversial theory that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and that the two had a child. Opus Dei is portrayed as a ruthless suppressor of the truth, using any...

The Awfulness of The Da Vinci Codehttp://www.americanheritage.com/entertainment/articles/web/20060519-movies-da-vinci-code-catholic-dan-brown-religion-tom-hanks.shtml http://tinyurl.com/zsuuc Posted Friday May 19, 2006 12:30 PM EDT In art as in life there is nothing so powerful as a bad idea whose time has come. Every decade or so a craze comes out of nowhere that inexplicably grabs hold of a portion of the public’s imagination, whips it into a frenzy, and then dissipates, leaving future generations wondering what the fuss was all about. The first such craze of the twenty-first century is, as you can’t have avoided hearing, a silly novel by a writer named Dan Brown called The Da...

I've been thinking a lot lately, perhaps it's no surprise, on the public face of Opus Dei, much of it no doubt the result of The Da Vinci Code. The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to say that The Da Vinci Code is a blessing in disguise not only for Opus Dei, but also for Christians worldwide – and in the end, for society. There is no doubt that the movie is a blasphemous caricature of Christianity, but the result of the film (and book) is that it is causing people to question and delve...

Am I the ONLY one completely BORED to death by all this talk about The Da Vinci Code? I mean for weeks all media have been flooded with more info than I would ever want about The Da Vinci Code. When I went to IMDB to look up something about a movie (OTHER than The Da Vinci Code), their damn ad banner would pop up and cover my screen and could be removed only with difficulty. Then there were endless talk shows about this "controversy." Worst of all, the History channel got taken over by programs about the Da Vinci...

Pope Benedict XVI is one of the “most prepared” popes in the last two or three centuries, but he’s “not sexy,” says veteran author and journalist John Allen in an interview in a Spanish newspaper. “Culturally he (Benedict) is very prepared to be pope, perhaps the best so in the last two or three centuries. But from the journalistic point of view he’s not very ‘sexy’,” said Allen, according to the Spanish El Pais newspaper. “Without a doubt, John Paul II is the most ‘sexy’ of the modern popes. Whatever he said, it ended up on the front pages of...

Rocky Mountain News   To print this page, select File then Print from your browser URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4711045,00.html Chris Schneider © NewsClare Chavez, of Denver, a member of the Catholic lay organization Opus Dei, checks on her 6-week-old baby, Pilar Chavez, as she sleeps underneath a window at their home in Denver on Thursday. Chavez is one of approximately 20 members of Opus Dei in Colorado. Members of Opus Dei try to set record straightMovie puts focus on order that puzzles even many CatholicsBy Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain NewsMay 19, 2006Denver investment banker Steve Markel recalls being with a group...

Opus Dei, the Da Vinci Code and ODAN For those of us who have witnessed firsthand Opus Dei’s deceptive and manipulative practices, it has not been easy watching Opus Dei stage a large public relations campaign in order to dispel the image the book ‘The DaVinci Code” has projected about them. It is equally hard to watch Opus Dei not be honest about their questionable practices. An inaccurate explanation of what exists within Opus Dei is being projected through their public statements and media appearances. The timing of their response to the movie appears highly choreographed and feels more like...

War on Christianity has been declared. On which side of the battle line will you stand? The movie version of Dan Brown's book, THE DA VINCI CODE, is now in theaters. Although the movie significantly waters down the unrelenting, anti-Christian attacks and virulent paganism and goddess worship of the novel, it promotes the book and contains enough falsehoods and scurrilous conjecture to distort the truth about Jesus Christ, the Bible, Christianity, and God. That, coupled with the book’s popularity and some Christians’ ignorance about their faith, leads us to believe that the movie, and the attention it draws, will increase...

'Da Vinci Code' Misses the Mark for Critics http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/film_cannes_da_vinci_code By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer Wed May 17, 8:58 AM ET "The Da Vinci Code" drew lukewarm praise, shrugs of indifference, some jeering laughter and a few derisive jabs Tuesday from arguably the world's toughest movie crowd: critics at the Cannes Film Festival. The year's most anticipated movie, "The Da Vinci Code" was a generally faithful adaptation of Dan Brown's monster best seller, spinning a murder thriller that stems from a cover-up of secrets about Christianity's roots. While readers worldwide devoured the novel, reaction from Cannes critics ranged from mild...

Catholicism's misunderstood do-gooders Barbara Kay National Post Wednesday, May 17, 2006 Opus Dei, the real-life Catholic fellowship Dan Brown mauls to fictional shreds in his novel The Da Vinci Code, has profited from the public's fascination with the Code phenomenon by opening its "secret" chambers to journalists, revealing the group's benign modern face. A slew of media interviews with candid, urbane numeraries has done much to roll back the negative stereotypes -- not altogether undeserved in the past -- of an inward-dwelling cadre of ultra-conservative spiritual elites. I've been interested in Opus Dei for a while -- not because...

“The Da Vinci Code” has undermined faith in the Roman Catholic Church and badly damaged its credibility, a survey of British readers revealed Tuesday as tensions over — and hype for — the forthcoming film reached a fever pitch. As its stars off headed to walk the red carpet at Cannes, where the film was set to debut Wednesday before a worldwide release Friday, at least two countries limited the film's release. The British survey, released by a group of prominent Catholics, revealed that readers of Dan Brown's blockbuster novel are twice as likely to believe Jesus Christ fathered children...

(CBS) CHICAGO The Catholic Church's most controversial group is the villain at the center of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." But what's the truth behind Opus Dei? The group has some 85,000 members worldwide and 3,000 in the U.S. CBS 2's Antonio Mora reports 800 of them live in Chicago, where Opus Dei got its American start almost 50 years ago and where it still has a powerful presence. A powerful mysterious cult sends a masochistic albino monk to murder anyone who might reveal a centuries-old secret that could destroy the church. The killer cult is "The Da Vinci...

Billboard ads for "The Da Vinci Code" have been urging us to "Seek the truth." I only wish Sony Pictures had taken its own advice. "The Da Vinci Code's" misrepresentations about Christ, Christianity and the Catholic Church are anything but helpful in the goal of finding out what's true. The same could be said of "The Da Vinci Code's" fictional portrait of Opus Dei. What do we Opus Dei members have in common with Silas, the murderous albino monk of "The Da Vinci Code"? I have been a member of Opus Dei for almost 50 years and can say with...

"Catholics Are Victims of an Offense" ROME, MAY 15, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The press office of the Opus Dei Prelature sent this statement to ZENIT on Friday in response to comments by the director of the soon-to-be-released film "The Da Vinci Code." * * * On Thursday the Italian press published interviews with Ron Howard, director of "The Da Vinci Code" film. In statements attributed to him, Howard said that "to deny the right to see the film is a fascist act," and also "to tell someone not to go see the film is an act of militancy and militancy generates...

The Da Vinci Code is only a novel. It is not a source of serious information, but it does raise some serious questions. 1. Was Jesus Christ really married? Yes. Jesus was married to the Church. In the New Testament, Jesus is frequently referred to as the Bridegroom, and St. Paul tells us: “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. This is a tremendous mystery. I’m applying it to Christ and the Church.” (Ephesians 5:31-32) In fact, the Christian vocation is nothing less than an invitation...

The Da Vinci CatechismThe Da Vinci Code is only a novel. It is not a source of serious information, but it does raise some serious questions. 1. Was Jesus Christ really married?Yes. Jesus was married to the Church. In the New Testament, Jesus is frequently referred to as the Bridegroom, and St. Paul tells us: “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. This is a tremendous mystery. I’m applying it to Christ and the Church.” (Ephesians 5:31-32) In fact, the Christian vocation is nothing less than...

DAN Brown’s bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, was first published in 2003. By April 2005 it had sold 17 million copies in 44 languages and it is still selling well, as any traveller by plane, bus or train will confirm. It is a novel of the popular, conspiracy theory type. The central thesis is that “the Church” has covered up the fact that Mary Magdalene married Christ. Christ’s divinity was a myth invented by Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century AD and the pair had descendants. Brown suggests that Mary Magdalene’s character was unjustly impugned by “the Church” in...

The Da Vinci Code director Ron Howard has rejected demands by Opus Dei to attach a disclaimer to his would-be blockbuster labeling the film as a work of fiction, spurring a rebuke from the religious sect. "It's not theology. It's not history. To start off with a disclaimer...Spy thrillers don't start off with disclaimers," Howard told the Los Angeles Times in Sunday's edition. ... "It's very controversial," Howard said. "What Dan Brown did with the novel, we didn't back away from in making the movie. I think what a lot of people have discovered--a lot of theologians--is this is a...