Pope Leo XIV on Monday met in a private audience with Gareth Gore, a British journalist whose work has criticized Opus Dei as abusive.
Gore said he spoke to the pope for more than 40 minutes and presented him with testimonies from alleged victims of the organization.
Gore is the author of the 2024 book “Opus,” which accuses Opus Dei of financial misdeeds and spiritual and physical abuse against its members.
Writing on his Substack after the March 16 meeting, the journalist said Pope Leo praised his book as a “rigorous piece of work.”
Gore also said he previously thought the Vatican did not want to seriously address accusations of abuse within Opus Dei but that his meeting with Leo “forces me to reassess those conclusions.”
The Vatican did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting.
A spokesman for Opus Dei said the group had no comment on the meeting or Gore’s statement and pointed to prior statements from Opus Dei about Gore’s book.
Opus Dei has previously denounced Gore’s book as “littered with twisted facts, errors, conspiracy theories, and even outright lies.”
The pope received Opus Dei’s prelate, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, in audience at the Vatican last month.
The Feb. 16 meeting came as the personal prelature’s proposed statutes — submitted to the Holy See on June 11, 2025 — remain under review.
Opus Dei’s draft is being examined by the Dicastery for the Clergy following the reforms to the governance of personal prelatures introduced under Pope Francis.
In Church structure, Opus Dei is a “personal prelature,” which, according to canon law, “consists of presbyters and deacons of the secular clergy” joined together to “accomplish particular pastoral or missionary works.”
The organization was founded by Spanish priest Father Josemaría Escrivá in 1928. Escrivá was canonized a saint in 2002.
