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The prayer cards on display at the Catholic Information Center were a logical first step toward potentially beatifying young Margaret.

Opus Dei had offered the lobby of its most public-facing institution in America to further this cause.

The portrait symbolized a growing symbiosis between Opus Dei and Leo.

The bookshop and chapel would soon provide a platform for Leo as he detailed the philosophy and worldview that would inform his decisions about spending the $1.6 billion bequest from Seid.

The Washington Opus Dei crowd brimmed with pride and admiration as they gathered at the Mayflower Hotel,
just around the corner from the CIC,
to confer the center’s greatest honor
— the John Paul II New Evangelization Award
— at a black-tie dinner in October 2022.

The award ceremony was especially pertinent, given the success of the Dobbs case at the Supreme Court,
which had overturned Roe v. Wade and had ended a woman’s constitutional right to legal abortion in the United States.

“It’s particularly fitting that the very year in which Dobbs was decided we are honoring Leonard Leo,”
Bill Barr said in a congratulatory video played before the award ceremony.

“No one has done more to advance traditional values and especially the right to life than Leonard.”

Paul Scalia spoke, too, recounting his memories of Margaret Mary.

Father Trullols, the Opus Dei priest who had taken charge of the Catholic Information Center following the death of Father Arne in 2017,
was shown holidaying at the Leo’s mansion in Maine.

“Thank you so much, Father Charles
— for this privilege,
for your leadership of the Catholic Information Center,
for your friendship,” began Leo in his acceptance speech.

“It’s been a real privilege to be a part of this great enterprise and have you as a friend.

I do think the real honor this evening should go to the CIC
— along with the Leonine Forum, which I think is a very important piece of our future.”

By 2022, the “spiritual enrichment” program that had been started by the Opus Dei priest Father Arne Panula a decade earlier had been expanded to other cities,
including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles,
and counted more than 800 alumni.

“They are the cutting edge of the New Evangelization,” continued Leo.

“Few organizations are doing more to raise up a new generation of courageous and faithful Catholic men and women.”

Without irony, Leo suggested that the audience that night,
some of whom had paid as much as $25,000 a table,
were the oppressed minority.

“Catholicism faces vile and amoral current-day barbarians, secularists, and bigots,”
Leo continued.

“These barbarians can be known by their signs:
they vandalized and burnt our churches after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade,
they show up at events like this one trying to frighten and muzzle us.

From coast to coast, they are conducting a coordinated and large-scale campaign to drive us from the communities they want to dominate.”

Only a few weeks earlier, after a group of protestors had scrawled “dirty money lives here” on the sidewalk outside his home,
Leo used his awards speech to blame such attacks on
“the progressive Ku Klux Klan.”

“They spread false and slanderous rhetoric about Catholic apostolates and institutions like the one represented here tonight,” he said, referring to Opus Dei.

Within weeks of giving his speech, Leo had begun work on his next big project
— offering a glimpse into how he and his network would spend the $1.6 billion donated by Seid.

Having orchestrated a conservative, Catholic takeover of the Supreme Court,
Leo now set his sights on things much broader
— and outlined his ambitions for orchestrating a similar revolution in other sectors of society,
such as education,
the media, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley.

“Wokeism in the corporate environment, in the educational environment,
one-sided journalism,
entertainment that’s really corrupting our youth
— why can’t we build talent pipelines and networks that can positively affect those areas?”
Leo asked in a promotional video for his latest initiative #Teneo,
which promised to “crush liberal dominance.”

In short, he was creating a Federalist Society for everything.

Almost a century after Escrivá’s vision for Opus Dei, the organization
— through the Catholic Information Center,
through the Leonine Forum,
and through the initiatives of prominent sympathizers like Leonard Leo
— had its biggest opportunity yet to definitively influence society,
just as the Opus Dei founder had envisioned.

-- Gareth Gore.

From the forthcoming book "OPUS: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church"