After her death, strange signs appeared.

The real estate billionaire Robin Arkley
— the man who had provided the money to lobby for Roberts and Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court
— invited the Leos to spend some time at his ranch in California.

On the way there, they spent a night in a hotel in San Francisco.

After checking in, they went up to their room and Margaret’s younger sister Elizabeth rushed over to a bowl of complimentary candy and dug her hand into it.

In it, she discovered a Sacred Heart medal.

On the last day at the ranch, Leo’s wife Sally came across another medal.

A few weeks later, someone visiting Leo at work told him they found another medal in their airplane seat.

The Leos told friends that they were convinced these medals were signs from heaven that Margaret was both safe and still with them.

The experience would deepen his faith, marking him out as a crusader
— and a target for Opus Dei.

As chaplain of the "Catholic Information Center",
the Opus Dei chapel and bookshop on K Street,
just a stone’s throw from the White House, #Father #Arne #Panula introduced a number of new initiatives in the early 2010s
to generate a steadier stream of donations
— and to better integrate the movement with wealthy Catholics.

Blue-eyed and silver-haired, Father Arne was a big figure within Opus Dei.

For a period in the nineties, he was the organization’s most senior man in the United States.

A native of Minnesota, he had grown up in a small town on the shores of Lake Superior and had joined the Work while at Harvard.

He moved to Rome after graduating, where he lived alongside the Opus Dei founder #Josemaría #Escrivá and trained to become a priest.

After ordination, he moved back to the States to take on the role of chaplain at "The Heights",
an Opus Dei school in Washington, which was still in its infancy.

During his forty years in the movement, he had also spent some time in California, and had become a close friend of #Peter #Thiel, the billionaire entrepreneur who helped found PayPal and who had been an early investor in Facebook.

On long hikes in the Marin headlands, just north of San Francisco, the two men bonded over their shared disdain for government
— and the dangers of liberal attempts to correct the ills of society through policies like #affirmative #action.

His first big initiative at the "Catholic Information Center" copied a popular strategy that had proved lucrative in almost every industry:
the awards dinner.

By bestowing an award on Washington’s most respected conservative Catholics,
and then hosting a lavish dinner in their honor
— to which all the city’s wealthy Catholics were invited
— he generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single evening
and established the CIC at the heart of this influential community.

And so the ️John Paul II Award️ was born in 2012.

The inaugural award went to Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington,
who was popular with conservative members of his flock and who had recently stoked controversy by becoming one of the most senior members of the Church to sign the #Manhattan #Declaration.

This was an ecumenical statement drafted by Robert George, and co-signed by the Opus Dei operative Luis Tellez, Maggie Gallagher, and other members of the Catholic right,
which called on Christians not to comply with laws permitting abortion, same-sex marriage, and other practices that went against their beliefs.

The following year the award went to George Weigel, a biographer of Pope John Paul II and a big figure within the American Catholic right.

The Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, an influential and wealthy Catholic brotherhood;
the founder of the Becket Fund, a lobby group championing religious rights;
and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would all become recipients over the next few years.

Roberts was also involved in an Opus Dei-affiliated high school leadership program in Austin, Texas.

A website that tracks Opus Dei men’s activities called
"Where You Are" included a profile of the high school program in Austin
where Roberts appears to volunteer and
“contributes significantly “ to the school’s career and leadership program.

Roberts was featured as a guest at another Opus Dei-linked school,
the #Camino #Schools, in 2023.

In introductory remarks before Roberts spoke, the school’s chairman, Bob #Rose, praised schools that
teach boys and girls they are “different”,
they learn differently and are inspired by different things,
and where boys are taught by “manly men” who serve as role models.

Roberts’ critics said concerns about his ties to Opus Dei were not connected to his identity or beliefs as a Roman Catholic.

“Kevin Roberts, like all Americans, has a guaranteed freedom to worship or not under our constitution,”
said Lisa Graves,
co-founder of "Court Accountability",
a non-partisan group that seeks to combat judicial corruption.

”That is not at issue. What is of concern is how some powerful elites,
like Roberts,
who have failed to persuade the American people to embrace their agenda,
seem eager to use the power of the executive branch to impose their personal religious views
as binding law on other Americans
– by barring abortion,
using the government to endorse the rhythm method of contraception,
even banning mention of ‘condoms’ in women’s preventative health,
as well as assailing the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.”

Heritage did not respond to a request for comment.

The CIC did not respond to a request for comment.

During Roberts’ September 2023 speech,
which received little notice at the time
but is posted on the center’s YouTube page,
Roberts detailed how conservative Catholics and their allies could advance US policy
to end access to abortion, same-sex marriage and contraception.

Knowing the unpopularity of banning birth control
– a harder political battle to wage than advancing anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage policies
– he encouraged an #incremental approach to pursuing this long-term goal.

“Even in a politically conservative setting,
that can be a very difficult thing to advance,”
Roberts told attendees at the CIC event.

“A majority of Roman Catholics don’t believe in that teaching,
if public opinion surveys are the case.
And so it makes it very difficult to advocate for that.”

The faithful should practice the
“gift of discernment”
to know when to bring it up:

“Sometimes the right thing at the right time to the right person
isn’t the full teaching of humanity, right?
It isn’t the full teaching of contraception.

And recognizing that that’s not the time is no way turning into Judas.
In fact, it’s being #apostolic.

And the very definition of the word, which is in modern common parlance, meeting someone where they are.”

In espousing his theory of
“radical incrementalism”,
or what he called the
“enchilada theory”,
he said it was critical for conservatives to work first
to achieve a small part of a larger policy goal
based on what’s politically possible at the moment.

Sometimes, he said, having even half an enchilada could be a victory.

On abortion, he noted that Roman Catholics believe
“no abortion can be morally justified”,
but that even in conservative circles in the US,
this is not a majority opinion,
and it’s an
“even more difficult position to hold”
after the Dobbs decision.

Using the “same vocabulary of our faith” in the policy arena
has a negative effect on electoral outcomes, he said.

Trump, for his part, has sought to distance himself from Project 2025,
though the people behind it have close ties to the former president,
and the policies it envisions often align with Trump’s ideas.

Roberts has said he is “good friends” with JD #Vance, Trump’s running mate,
and Vance has praised Project 2025 as having “some good ideas”.

Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, also wrote the foreword for Roberts’ forthcoming book,
praising the author for articulating a “genuinely new future for conservatism”.

“We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,” Vance wrote.

Opus Dei does not disclose the names of its members.

The group’s roots date back to a century ago, when the group was established in Spain
in response to a clash between conservative Catholics and anti-Catholic socialism and communism in Spain.

Decades later, the group was granted special status by the conservative pope John Paul II,
who supported Opus Dei and saw it as a response to the rise of liberation theology in Latin America,
a progressive church movement.

Some of Opus Dei’s special rights were revoked in recent years by Pope Francis,
who is seen as a more progressive pontiff.

One of the core tenets of Opus Dei is that it does not believe in the traditional separation of church and state.

Instead, said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University,
it believes the two ought to have a symbiotic relationship.

“They are secretive, so while they are not [outwardly] part of this [Project 2025] per se,
it is not surprising at all that some of their members are part of it.
They see this moment in politics
– and the possibility of allowing ‘woke ideology’ to win
– as fundamentally changing the nature of America, western civilization and Christianity,” Faggioli said.

He added: “Opus Dei is part of [a movement of] US conservative and traditionalist Catholicism
that holds a view that the United States is the last bastion of Christendom,
so that if the United States goes a certain way, so goes Christianity,
and Catholicism.”

Indeed Roberts made it clear earlier this month that he believes the US is at a crossroads,
and “in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”.

Asked whether it had a view on Roberts’ remarks or Project 2025,
a spokesperson for Opus Dei told the Guardian in a statement:
“Opus Dei is an institution of the Catholic Church that tries to help people come closer to God in their work and everyday lives.
Opus Dei’s aims are purely spiritual and it does not endorse or have any opinion on any political project of any kind.”

Opus Dei is controversial not only in the US.

Dozens of women from Argentina and Paraguay filed a complaint to the Vatican over labor exploitation and abuses of power
they say they experienced after joining the group at sites in multiple countries.

And reporting in Australia gave insight into schools run by Opus Dei,
where former students allege their education left them with “psychological damage”.

Roberts’ personal background suggests his ties to Opus Dei are not just limited to the CIC.

A school founded by Roberts in Louisiana,
called John Paul the Great Academy,
considers Opus Dei-founder Escrivá its “patron”.