BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentine prosecutors have concluded that there are grounds for launching a prison investigation into the best authorities of Opus Dei in South America between 1983 and 2015 for the crimes of human trafficking and labor exploitation towards at the least 44 girls recruited by the spiritual order to carry out home duties of their properties.
In accordance with a doc seen by The Related Press, prosecutors sought a federal choose to summon those that served throughout that interval as vicar or regional councilor of Opus Dei Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia to testify: Carlos Nannei (1991-1997), Patricio Olmos (1998-2014) and Víctor Urtizarrazu (2014-2022). Additionally they search to interrogate the regional secretary answerable for the order’s feminine part, Gabriel Dondo, who held the place till 2015.
Opus Dei — Work of God in Latin — was based by the Spanish priest Josemaría Escrivá in 1928, and has 90,000 members in 70 nations. The lay group, which was tremendously favored by St. John Paul II, who canonized Escrivá in 2002, has a singular standing within the church and stories on to the pope. Most members are laymen and ladies with secular jobs and households who try to “sanctify strange life.” Different members are clergymen or celibate lay individuals.
Following a criticism filed in 2022, the workforce of prosecutors launched an investigation that concluded that from the early Seventies till 2015, “individuals holding totally different positions inside Opus Dei established a construction devoted to recruiting at the least 44 girls, most of them ladies and adolescents, to be subjected to residing circumstances akin to servitude.”
The Opus Dei in Argentina has denied the accusations.
“We categorically deny the accusations of human trafficking and labor exploitation,” mentioned the workplace of the Prelature of Opus Dei in Argentina in an announcement, including that so as to construct this accusation, “the formation obtained by among the girls within the group and the vocation freely chosen by the numerary assistants of Opus Dei are utterly taken out of context. It is a completely false accusation.”
Prosecutors argue that Opus Dei chosen ladies and adolescents from low-income households, normally from rural areas removed from the group’s exercise facilities, and that they have been recruited “below the promise of receiving coaching and enhancing their job prospects.”
“As soon as admitted, they have been subjected to a regime of ‘non secular, skilled and work coaching,’ and in the event that they confirmed a vocation to be numerary assistants, they have been assigned for all times to carry out home duties in Opus Dei facilities, each within the nation and overseas,” they mentioned.
The investigation facilities on 4 instances that match the crime of human trafficking below present Argentinian laws.
A number of the complainants gave their testimony to AP in a narrative printed in November 2021 wherein they reported working below “manifestly unlawful circumstances” that included working with out pay for 12 hours-plus with out breaks apart from meals or prayer, no registration within the Social Safety system and different violations of primary rights.
Their identities have been preserved within the prosecutors’ decision.
Many of the girls requested dispensation saying that the bodily and psychological calls for they have been subjected to throughout their years of service grew to become insupportable. They keep that they have been left to their very own units, with out cash, and plenty of wanted psychological remedy after leaving Opus Dei.
A federal choose should now determine whether or not to grant the prosecutors’ request to summon the previous vicars to testify.
Opus Dei Argentina reaffirmed its dedication to totally cooperate with the justice “to make clear the information and resolve the state of affairs in a good and clear method.”
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