Recently, I read a post on Reddit in which an ex-Numerary member of Opus Dei claimed that Opus Dei’s international seminary in Rome, also known as the “Roman College of the Holy Cross”, or “Cavabianca”, is reportedly being planned for closure.
For those who would like to know more about Cavabianca, I created a Wikipedia page about it last year.
According to the Reddit post, during yesterday’s Agora meeting of ex-Numeraries, the host, Antonio Moya, announced that reports had emerged from multiple countries. These reports, allegedly coming from individuals within Opus Dei or those closely connected to it (including through family members), suggest that Cavabianca may be slated to close.
So although this closure has not yet been formally announced by the Prelate of Opus Dei, Msgr. Fernando Ocariz, it is reasonable to think that the announcement is coming very soon.
Antonio gives a few reasons why it would make sense for Cavabianca to close now:
Most centrally, it is part of the shift away from Opus being a personal prelature and toward it being a clerical public association of the faithful. Associations do not have their own seminaries, their faithful attend seminary in diocesan seminaries alongside everybody else (who Opus Dei leadership considers to be “the great unwashed”) and then become incorporated into the association. (An example would be the Kikos, ie Neocatechumenal Way- the attend diocesan seminary.)
This is the main reason why this news is important, if it is indeed the main reason why it is happening. It means the pope is consistently following up on the motu proprio of 2023 to disband Opus Dei as an independent prelature of clerics and reconfigure it as a clerical association much more embedded in the ordinary life of the universal Church.
As evidence that this is what is driving the closure of Cavabianca, Moya reports the case of a male num who went to Cavabianca for seminary in the past few years. He made copies of the fanatical internal documents that are used for the ‘formation’ of the seminarians. He sent them to the Dicastery for Clerics about 18 months ago. Opus Dei leadership shredded/burned the documents in an attempt to deny their existence to the Vatican, but this guy had the copies.
That sounds rather “cloak and dagger,” but those of us who have been opus as sm know that it’s not actually far-fetched. Opus has a large number of “internal documents” about a huge range of topics. Outsiders are not allowed to read these, and even most ordinary members of opus are not allowed to read them but are only told verbally in ‘formation classes.’ Everything is on a “need to know” basis. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the seminarians are given the most extreme and effectively idolatrous ‘formation’ about ‘loyalty’ to ‘Our Father and opus Dei’, which actually amounts to sectarianism.
A second major reason why this international seminary is being closed is the lack of male numeraries to populate it. The pope has issued a general guideline that throughout the Church seminaries with fewer than 30 seminarians should be merged with other seminaries. The reason is that a seminary that is so small tends to take on a sectarian or ‘parochial’ mentality and become self-referential, ie not reflect the universality of the Church. In the 1980s Cavabianca had more than 200 seminarians. Now it has about 30. (Currently there are 50 but 20 of them are already ordained deacons so those don’t really count as seminarians, but as alumni of the seminary proper.)
Reason for closure related to the previous: Cavabianca is part of a huge complex that used to be a castle, with extensive gardens and infrastructure. It costs a lot to maintain, but there are not many people using it.
Chavez Cyrillus Mariae Poon 