BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Ara [Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain]
July 3, 2025
Prosecutors are asking to charge Mariano Fazio along with the four clerics already accused by 43 women.
The number two of Opus Dei, the auxiliary vicar Mariano Fazio, was formally accused of trafficking women for himlabor exploitation within their religious order in conditions of semi-slavery, a practice that the Opus would have committed for four decades in Argentina. This is stated in the eight-page document to which he has accessed ElDiario.es, within the judicial process opened against the top officials of the Opus in Argentina. the Opus –that is, the number two of the order worldwide– and lives in the Vatican, he requests that he be charged along with four officials responsible for the order in the country who had already been accused. The petition was sent on June 11 to federal judge Daniel Rafecas by prosecutors Alejandra Mángano_, initially included in the accusation, which did charge the three priests who had held the same position as him in previous and subsequent years: the former regional vicars of Argentina Carlos Nannei (1991-2000), Patricio Olmos (2000-2010) and Víctor Urrestarazu (2014), female member of the Opus in Argentina, Gabriel Dondo. Fazio had also been regional vicar between 2010 and 2014.
Following the complaint of up to 43 victims, the judicial process investigates a system of trafficking of poor women at the Lara women’s residence in Buenos Aires. The maids who served senior officials in the Opus hierarchy did not receive any salary for their work and lived in conditions of semi-reclusion. The system has been described as common to Opus Dei in several states, including Spain, in the documentary series by journalist Mònica Terribas The heroic minute. Mariano Fazio lived for many years at the Opus Dei headquarters in Buenos Aires, where the Lara residence is located.
Several women who worked have denounced the leadership of the Opus in the country. Most managed to leave the order –some escaped– before 2008, the year the traffic law came into force in the country. Of the 43 victims, only four cases fall under this law, the only ones after 2008.
The accusation focuses on the case of a Bolivian woman who was captured when she was a minor and who served as a maid for the Opus for 31 years. MIE, her initials, was called to testify for the second time in April 2025 before Judge Rafecas, and it was then that she said she knew “Father Mariano [Fazio]” and that, in fact, between 2009 and 2014 she was assigned to clean Fazio’s room, while he was. The prosecutors’ letter highlights “the number of tasks that were required of him, the availability at all times, the endless days and the psychological submission”, and points out a phrase from the victim: “I was walking down the street thinking that I didn’t want to. live. I thought about how people could smile, and then they sent me to a psychiatrist.Psychiatrists from the religious organization gave him antidepressants and sleeping pills.
Google translated from Catalan.