Rosario, cradle of Opus Dei in Argentina

He was referring to the upper floor of the modest house that had been opened in downtown Rosario: in San Juan 865. Only two years later, the second was opened in Buenos Aires.

In March 1950, after 36 hours of travel, three members of Opus Dei had arrived at the newly opened Ezeiza airport: priest Ricardo Fernández Vallespín and professors Ismael Sánchez Bella and Francisco Ponz. The objective of this first transfer was to get to know the country and its inhabitants in order to prepare the apostolic work.

Seeing good possibilities and with the support of Caggiano, Escrivá de Balaguer made sure that Fernández Vallespín and Sánchez Bella remained in the city where they began to develop, respectively, pastoral and professional tasks.

>> Read more: Opus Dei: testimonies of an ordeal with Rosario’s leg

In 1952, Julia Capón arrived in this house: “Kitty”, a woman from Santiago who had applied for admission, a step that all members of the “family” must take.

Others joined her: Sabina Alandes, María Elsa Fabri, Ana María Brun, language student; Estela Barbero, history student; Alba María Blotta, education sciences, and Evangelina Del Forno, architecture student at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Photos of the female branch that militated and worked with devotion for the work.

As stated in “History of Opus Dei in Argentina”, on the Opusdei.org site, at the beginning of 1953, “La Veinticinco”, the first Opus center for women in Argentina, was opened in Rosario, rue 25 de Diciembre , between San Juan and San Luis. It quickly grew small and the first dormitory was activated: Cheroga, at San Luis 401.

Along with this growth, the first supernumeraries and supernumeraries were also added to the work. Aurelio García, Eugenio Brusa and his wife Delia; Marcos Ronchino, Juan Lo Celso and José Vicente Vitta. And in 1957, Ignacio Rodríguez, worker of the Urquiza railway cleaning crews, who eventually became a guard, discovered his vocation to Opus Dei and applied for admission as an attaché (single members, with a profile of “brother-workers”). .

In the early 1960s, Opus Dei members in Argentina were few in number. They did not exceed 50, between men and women, married and celibate, priests and laity.

And during these years, Caggiano’s political-religious career did not stop. Nine years after helping Opus with the first house, he was appointed president of the Episcopal Conference, military vicar general and cardinal primate of Argentina.

He also inaugurated the first courses of counter-revolutionary war dictated in the army. And in 1961 he prefaced the Spanish edition of “Marxismo Leninismo” to guide Catholic soldiers in the “fight to the death” against Communism, in addition to being a staunch companion of de facto President Juan Carlos Onganía.

Opus Rosario Schools

Today, more than seven decades after this first house, the members, associations and foundations of the Work – benefiting from tax advantages and supposedly not for profit – have multiplied in the country. They have close links with health zones like the Austral University Hospital, with sports centers like Camino Real Tenis and Polo (in Buenos Aires) and with training and educational establishments: there are 21 schools throughout the Argentina.

In Rosario, they had and have the Opus seal, through various civil associations, Austral University, whose national antechamber had been the Institute of Higher Business Studies (IES); Mirasoles, Los Arroyos, Manantiales Kindergarten and Los Senderos schools.

>> Read more: Ten years in the footsteps of Opus Dei

Also University residences at Cheroga, for women, and Litoral University, for men. The cultural center of Nabla and the residences for numbers Arches and boulevards, although there are more recent ones.

There is the domestic training center, La Estancia, in Pérez, 15 kilometers from Rosario. And among others, the Camino Foundation (iconic name of its spaces since it is the same as the book in which Escrivá condensed the mission of the Work).

This local foundation was created in 1991, it is associated with Conin (foundation against child malnutrition created in Mendoza by doctor Abel Pascual Albino). It is directed by Ivonne Rouillón de Witry. It is an organization that, among other visible actions, has deployed its promotional and charity tables at the Luciana Aymar World Cup stadium during the international hockey championships.

On its official website, it is read that in order to be “a bridge between the will to give and the need to receive”, Camino manages “the union with the municipal, provincial or national government, other NGOs, companies and individuals. or legal. “.

Another testimony

To the voice of the 43 old auxiliary numbers, there is now another, critic, who left the Work a few years ago. This is Rosario Flavia Dezzuto, current Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences at the National University of Córdoba (UNC).

Said The capital that she was the daughter of a member of the institution. “I was at Opus Dei between April 1982 and September 1987, when I was a teenager. My mother was a cooperator (N. de la R. added with prayer and financial support) and was very close to certain supernumeraries for specific reasons.

He learned the stories of the old auxiliary numbers and also the case of Carrero, the woman of this group who worked for Opus in this city from 1999 to 2002. And immediately commented on his Facebook wall what he repeated to this newspaper almost like a cue.

“Opus Dei is a harmful institution of the Catholic Church in many ways: it is responsible for reducing many people to servitude, and in this regard it has hatched a network of cover-ups and lies. It’s been a long time ago. This is already undeniable, and I think even out of shame they should act. I hope they still have zeal for justice. And of course, that the powers of the State do their thing, resist the pressures, that there will be, I have no doubts “, declared the professor who saves all the” investigations and notes which can be made on Opus ”and especially congratulate the women who dared to tell their stories. “I don’t know them, but I share with them having known the bowels of the same beast ”.

Thank god we left

Critical members of Opus Dei from different parties have been providing their testimonies for years telling why they left the institution and sharing internal regulations that are usually kept under lock and key. The stories published there are similar to those of the 43 old figures and Dezzuto.

Some with their names and photos, others with pseudonyms written in the site “Opus Libros”, which bears the title “Thank goodness we’re gone! Opus Dei is a road that leads nowhere.”

One of the historical documents that is unveiled is a letter that Escrivá de Balaguer wrote to Franco on May 23, 1958 and in which, among other things, he says: “I ask God Our Lord to fill Your Excellency with all kinds of fortunes. and may he give you abundant grace in the accomplishment of the lofty mission which you have entrusted to him. “