Kevin Roberts, architect of Project 2025, has close ties to the radical Catholic group Opus Dei
Heritage Foundation leader has long received spiritual guidance from the group and his policy goals align with its teachings
Kevin Roberts, the #
Heritage #
Foundation president and the architect of #
Project2025,
the conservative thinktank’s road map for a second Trump presidency,
has close ties and receives regular spiritual guidance from an Opus Dei-led center in Washington DC,
a hub of activity for the radical and secretive Catholic group.
#
Roberts acknowledged in a speech last September that
– for years – he has visited the Catholic Information Center,
or #
CIC, a K Street institution headed by an Opus Dei priest and incorporated by the archdiocese of Washington,
on a weekly basis for mass and “formation”, or religious guidance.
Opus Dei also organizes monthly retreats at the CIC.
In the speech
– which he delivered at the CIC and was recorded and is available online
– Roberts spoke candidly about his strategy for achieving extreme policy goals that he supports but are out of step with the views of a majority of Americans.
♦️Outlawing birth control ♦️is the “hardest” political battle facing conservatives in the future,
the 50-year-old political strategist said,
♦️but he urged conservatives to pursue even small legislative victories
– what he called “radical incrementalism”
– to advance their most rightwing policy objectives.
Roberts gained notoriety this year as the leading force behind Project 2025,
a foundation plan backed by more than 100 conservative groups that seeks to radically upend a broad range of policies
if Trump gets elected again,
from 🔸limiting abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights and 🔸dismantling the Department of Education, 🔸to ending diversity programs and increasing government support for “fertility awareness” programs, like 🔸ovulation tracking and practicing periodic abstinence, instead of more reliable contraception.
But Roberts’ personal ties to Opus Dei and the significance of his affiliation, has received far less attention.
Gareth #
Gore, the author of a forthcoming book on Opus Dei, called the Catholic organization “a political project shrouded in a veil of spirituality”.
The group’s founder, Saint Josemaría #
Escrivá, saw his followers as part of a “rising militia”, Gore said, who were seeking to🔸 “enter battle against the enemies of Christ”.
“Like Project 2025, Opus Dei at its core is a ⚠️reactionary stand against the progressive drift of society,” ⚠️Gore said.
“For decades now, the organization has thrown its resources at penetrating Washington’s political and legal elite
– and finally seems to have succeeded through its close association with men like Kevin #
Roberts and Leonard #
Leo.”
Leo is a conservative activist
who has led the Republican mission to install the rightwing majority in the supreme court
and finances many of the groups signed on to Project 2025.
Like Roberts, Leo also has links to the Opus Dei-linked CIC.
In a 2022 speech accepting the CIC’s highest honor,
the John Paul II New Evangelization award,
Leo praised the center while also referring to his political opponents as
❗️“vile and amoral current day barbarians, secularists and bigots” who were under the influence of the devil.❗️
Democrats, including Kamala Harris, have been sounding the alarm on Project 2025 to warn voters of what a second #
Trump administration could do.
“[Trump] and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class.
We know we have to take this thing seriously.
And can you believe they put that thing in writing?” Harris said this week in her first presidential campaign rally, to laughter.
“Read it. It’s 900 pages.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/26/kevin-roberts-project-2025-opus-dei?CMP=Share_iOSApp_OtherHeritage Foundation leader has long received spiritual guidance from group and his policy goals align with its teachings
Rachel Leingang (The Guardian)