Opus Dei official says 'Da Vinci Code' offers chance to discuss faith

Published: 2005-06-29

OTTAWA (CNS) -- Despite the negative publicity about Opus Dei in Dan Brown's best-seller, "The Da Vinci Code," the head of Opus Dei in Canada said he sees an opportunity. At a Mass in Ottawa June 25 celebrating the feast of St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, who founded Opus Dei in 1928, Msgr. Frederick Dolan, vicar of Opus Dei in Canada, said he sees the bad publicity as an opportunity to get people's attention. "Now is the chance to educate them about Christianity and the divinity of Christ, to go way beyond the surface of things with regard to the church and with regard to Opus Dei," Msgr. Dolan said. St. Escriva encouraged lay people to respond to a call to holiness where they were, sanctifying their work to God, without having to join a religious order or the clergy, and Msgr. Dolan said that was a revolutionary idea in 1928.

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