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BEYOND THE THRESHOLD -- A LIFE IN OPUS DEI |
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8. RETURN TO SPAIN My Family. My Friends My younger brother Manolo was waiting for me at the Madrid airport with Conchita Banon, Ismael Medina's wife. When my brother saw me arrive with Montserrat Amat, he asked me: "Do you have to go with her?" I answered: "Not on a bet!" I grabbed my suitcase and said to Montse: "I'm going with my family." For the first time in twelve years and after the terrible events of that morning in Rome, I was able to hug my brother and my friend, who, without pretense of sainthood, loved me deeply. When I got into the car I began to sob uncontrollably. There had been too many emotions for one day. My friend said to me: "Cry, it will do you good. Ismael has told us a great deal already." We took the new highway from Barajas, new for me, that is, to my parents' house on Lopez de Hoyos street, from which I had departed in 1950. I had abandoned my parents' house in 1950, to live in houses of Opus Dei, to which I had belonged since 1948. If departure was traumatic, the return home also involved its own tensions. It meant tacitly to admit that my parents were right, that I was mistaken, that Opus Dei was not what I thought. My mother opened the door of the house, and we embraced. I had not seen her again since that fleeting moment in 1953 in Rome. She behaved as if I had come back from an ordinary trip. I deeply appreciated it. She asked my friend to stay for lunch and had the tact to not prepare a special meal. The presence of my brother Manolo and my friend Conchita Banon helped to make these first hours in my home more relaxed. Suddenly the doorbell rang. "It's father," I said, and ran out to greet him. He gave me a kiss as if nothing special had happened. He asked if I had had a good trip. Then he joked with my friend Conchita, saying that she had had pretty bad luck with the luncheon menu that day and began to inquire about her husband and children. My father used to lie down for thirty minutes after lunch, but as he was about to enter his room, he took several keys off his keyring and gave them to me: "This is the house key. This is the mailbox key. Keep them. Ah! This is the car key." "I don't have my driver's license now," I interrupted. "It doesn't matter," he replied, "You already have one." He continued with a smile: "If you need money, your mother can give it to you because I don't have any small bills." Then he remembered what he wanted to tell me: "Don't be in a hurry about anything. If you want to work, work. I don't have any special concern that you should." Luncheon was especially delicious because everything was normal and calm. Afterwards, my mother showed me which room would be mine, since, there, had, of course, been changes in the house since I left. My brother Javier had finished his medical studies, was married, had several children, and lived in Barcelona. Conchita and my brother said they would take me for a ride around Madrid. They both realized that I had experienced too many strong emotions in one day and wanted me to relax. That night Conchita invited me to her house for supper, where I met her children and saw her husband, Ismael, who had arrived that day from Rome. It seemed to me that I was walking around on another planet. My head was swimming. Seeing Ismael here was certainly different from our meeting a few days earlier in Rome. He explained the steps he had taken and the difficulty he had had in getting to see me, as well as his concern that something very serious had happened to me. He told me that he urged Conchita to speak to my parents. Both Conchita and Ismael have a very special place in my heart. They were not only friends but gave me back my freedom. I subsequently visited them in Rome several times. They told me that when Opus Dei women found out that they lived in Rome, they invited them to visit Monsignor Escriva a couple of times. During the first visit, Ismael identified himself as a journalist and said that he would like an interview, but Monsignor's answer was somewhat brusque. On a second visit Escriva was more courteous. In any case, Ismael Medina never wrote about Opus Dei. As is standard practice, the Opus Dei women were assigned to keep the couple "contented" and provided the "highest honor" of a meeting with Escriva, perhaps to prevent Ismael from writing anything adverse in view of the events related to me. Evidently, Ismael could not forget that he had evidence of how I had been robbed of my freedom, nor could Conchita Banon ever forget how abjectly I had come back to Madrid. During the early days at home, despite my parents' efforts to smooth things over, I wept at the slightest provocation. When I tried to sleep the first night, everything spun around in my head, particularly recalling their claims that I was in mortal sin. I resolved to speak to Father Jose Todoli, the Dominican priest who worked in the Council for Scientific Research. When I called his convent the next day, I was told that he was a professor at the University of Valencia. I located him, and we agreed I would go to Valencia the following day. Before leaving for Valencia, I called Caracas to speak to Mrs. de Sosa, but the connection was so bad we could barely understand each other. I wrote a letter explaining the events of Rome. I keep as treasures her telegrams, the first of them in answer to my phone call. Father Todoli I will never forget that Father Todoli had the courtesy of coming to meet me at the station in Valencia. As soon as I saw him, I said that I had to go to confession, because I was in mortal sin. He looked at me sceptically, and I assured him: "Yes, Father Todoli, I am in mortal sin." Then, he said jovially: "Well, if you are in mortal sin, I am mortally hungry, because it is very late. So we are going to have supper. Then you go to your hotel and tomorrow, if you want, you can come to church and go to confession. And don't worry," he added, "I will be responsible before God for your mortal sins." Months later he told me how dreadful an impression I made on him when he met me at the station. He had known me before I entered Opus Dei and had been in Caracas; seeing me again he had the impression of meeting a badly treated, battered prisoner. Next day I went to the Dominican church and explained matters in the confessional. Suddenly he said, "Enough!, caramba! He went out of the confessional. I was terrified and thought that even Father Todoli was shocked by me. After a while he came to look for me and said: "I was waiting to give you communion. Where did you go?" When I said that I had thought he was frightened by my confession, he made a characteristic gesture as he said: "About you no, about them. Come on, come on, come so that I can introduce you to a lady who would like to get to know you." He introduced me to a charming woman who showed me Valencia for three days and entertained me as much as she could. Of course, I spoke to Father Todoli, who suggested that I should find some kind of a job to get back into Spanish life again so that I could begin to feel independent. I went back to Madrid reassured and with a much more positive view of my "new" life. I established my new ground rules. I decided that my life of piety should not suffer for my experience in Opus Dei, that God was not to blame. Also, that my interior life did not need to follow a regime based on the practices of that institution. During one of the first conversations with my younger brother, he gave me two thousand pesetas, and I asked: "Is it a little or a lot?" My brother smiled and told me I would have enough for some time, at least for transportation. Lest there should be any doubt, Opus Dei provides no social security, health insurance, or any financial assistance to anyone who leaves the institution, for whatever reason. It is also totally untrue that Monsignor Escriva "tried to help me look for a job," as affirmed by a public statement released by the central directress of Opus Dei on the appearance of the Spanish and Portugese editions of this book. [1] When I returned from Valencia, my mother informed me that Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri, my old director at Zurburan, had come to my parents' house. My mother told me that she had begun to cry, saying how sad everyone was that I had left the Work. She had asked where I was. My mother in good faith said that I had gone to Valencia. To Guadalupe's question whether anyone had called from Venezuela, my mother naively said: yes, Mrs. de Sosa. What my mother could not know was that Guadalupe had been sent by her superiors to trace my steps since returning home. Without going into details, I told my mother that she should not receive visits by anyone from Opus Dei, no matter what the excuse. Later on that day, still influenced by Monsignor Escriva's order that I not say anything about Opus Dei to my parents, I simply told them that I had left Opus Dei because I was no longer at ease there. My father said nothing but seemed unwilling to listen to the slightest explanation of the matter. Soon afterwards, I went to Barcelona to spend two days with my other brother, Javier and my sister-in-law, Teresa Soler, whom I met for the first time. Their children were charming and beautiful, and still quite small. I had the great satisfaction of seeing my brother work as a physician. Monsignor Escriva's threat still fresh in my mind, I explained bits and pieces of what had occurred in Rome. I found out that there were Opus Dei members within my extended family. As I was leaving, my brother and sister-in-law very generously gave me six thousand pesetas, a large amount at that time. "It's all we can do now," my brother said lovingly, "we're just beginning our life." After a long trip to Cartagena, where I was born, to see my paternal grandmother and other family members, I decided to look for work. At my age, I could not be a burden to my parents or my brothers. Madrid, because it had changed so much, seemed enormous to me, and I went around on foot to get familiar with it again. I resolved to set two objectives for each week: to go to a concert and visit a museum or exposition. As I rejoined normal life again, I began to discover that Opus Dei's so-called secularity was a myth. As I became part of everyday life, I was surprised, for example, to see the changes in the liturgy due to Vatican II, such as use of the vernacular instead of Latin in the Mass and that women went to church without the mantilla. I was annoyed when my friend Mary Mely Zoppetti de Terrer de la Riva would tell me I was "immature." She observed that Opus Dei makes people immature. For example, when you leave Opus Dei, you lack a sense of the value of things and tend to feel that people are obliged to give you what you need. I gradually realized that by isolating its members Opus Dei makes them overly dependent, even childish. Similarly, its lack of ecumenical spirit makes its members inflexible in human relations. My first step in the search for a job was to go to the Council of Scientific Research. However, I realized that with Opus Dei members in key positions, I had no chance of getting a position there. To find work in Madrid was no easy matter for a forty-year-old woman. I did not use the recommendations I had, although my cousin Antonio Carreras helped me get a splendid one from the Marquis of Luca de Tena. I wanted to know how far I could get on my own. Finally, in July, I started to work for the prestigious law firm, J. & A. Garrigues, on Antonio Maura street. Most of the staff did not know what to make of a woman my age, who was neither married nor attached to anyone. I never spoke about my "past" and did not tell anyone that I had belonged to Opus Dei. When I started to work for the law firm, I faced the problem of my lack of identification papers for the first time. Under treaties between Spain and Venezuela, as a Venezuelan citizen I was legally entitled to work, but the employer needed to see and keep copies of my documents. I showed my passport and was forced to lie, pretending to have lost my Venezuelan identity card and my driver's license and that, since the Consulate could not issue duplicates, I was planning to travel to Venezuela to get new copies. I was believed because of my family background, but felt manipulated by Opus Dei and cowed by Escriva's threat. Relations with my old friends had changed, primarily because their lives as married women with children were completely different from mine. I went to lunch with my friend Maria Asuncion Mellado one day and she told me she was an Opus Dei associate. Her parents were dead, and her brother had been married for several years. Although we were good friends, I understood that her devotion to Opus Dei came before everything else, so that I was unable to reestablish our friendship for many years. In December 1991, the news that her only brother Antonio Mellado Carbonell had died quite suddenly moved me so deeply that I called Maria in Cordoba, where she had lived for years, to offer my condolences. My call surprised her very much. I found her changed, but I imagine that her regard for Opus Dei might well be the same. In regard to my spiritual life, it was an effort to go to confession, because I did not want to speak about Opus Dei, yet it was unavoidable. Finally, one day, I went to confession to a Dominican at a church near my parents' home. First, in the confessional and then in his office, while I explained matters to him, I remember his silence. Finally, he said: "May I ask a question?" "Of course, Father," I answered. "Why do you go on believing in God?" "Because God has nothing to do with Opus Dei," was my reply. That response, which came out of the depths of my soul, is evidently what made me preserve my faith in God and the church. Encounter with Father Panikkar I spent that summer in Madrid. One night at the end of September, 1966, my cousin Juan Gillman came to my parents' house with his wife. He brought a set of slides of family events from weddings to baptisms, which had occurred during my years away. The maid entered and gave me a note which the concierge had brought up. Turning on the light, I saw with astonishment Raimundo Panikkar's name and telephone number in his own handwriting. I thought it was an Opus Dei trick and with serious reservations dialed the number. To my surprise, Raimundo Panikkar was staying at a residence for priests. At the outset I told him bluntly that I had left Opus Dei a few months earlier. To my astonishment, I discovered that he had left the Work just a month later than I. He explained that he was still a priest and incardinated in the diocese of Varanasi in India. Next day before work, I went to Mass that he celebrated at the residence for priests. We agreed to talk when I finished work that afternoon, since he was going to Argentina representing UNESCO the following day. He noted that when he arrived in Madrid he had not the slightest idea that I had left Opus Dei, but passing by my parents' house with Father Carlos Castro, whom I knew years earlier before he was a priest, it occurred to them to inquire what had become of me. They asked the concierge whether my parents still lived there and with the habitual indiscretion of concierges he said that not only did my parents still live there but that I had returned from America and was with them. I spoke to him with my old confidence and recounted clearly the experiences of the last year in Rome, Monsignor Escriva's outbursts, how the superiors kept my personal documents, my lack of freedom, and the accusations of which I was never informed. Under different circumstances, I might have resented Father Panikkar's own role in staging my vocational crisis, but I realized that he, too, had been disillusioned by his personal experience in Opus Dei, to which he had committed himself with the highest ideals. Father Panikkar made it clear that he understood and sympathized with my situation. When he learned that I had not told my parents the truth about what had happened, he told me that I had an obligation to do so. Father Panikkar left for Argentina the following day. That evening I said to my parents and my brother Manolo, who was still single and living at home, that I had to speak to them. That kind of announcement was not usual in my family, and everyone expected something grave, I tensely said that I wanted to tell them about what really happened to me in Opus Dei. Although I explained matters very summarily, I was clear and to the point. I felt too upset to enter into much detail. When I finished, my mother and brother remained silent, but my father said: "I didn't believe a word you said when you had just arrived. That's because I knew that Miguel Fisac, who is an intelligent man, said something similar, and later I found out about some of the harm Opus Dei members have done him and still do to him." I do not know how my father knew Miguel Fisac. Perhaps someone had mentioned him in a professional connection, since my father was an industrial engineer, and Fisac an architect. _______________ 1. In O Expresso (Lisbon), June 5, 1993, p. 42-R.
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