Opus Dei and the Transnational Catholic Cold War

The conservative Catholic lay order Opus Dei serves as a vehicle for examining a transnational anti-communist movement from the Spanish Civil War to the triumph of John Paul II’s church in the 1980s, that crucial third actor alongside Reagan’s America and Thatcher’s Britain in the defeat of communism. This paper draws on archives in Mexico, Spain, and the United States to trace an evolving anti-communist, pro-business, and sexually traditionalist religious movement as it arises in Nationalist Spain in the 1930s; moves with male and female evangelists to Mexico City, Chicago, and Boston after World War II; contributes to economic neoliberalism through institutions and policy-makers in the 1960s and ‘70s; and wins wide influence within the post-Vatican II Catholic Church as a counterweight to liberation theology and sexual liberalism.