Among the most singular pieces of the internal spirituality of Opus Dei is a phrase that does not come from St. Josemaría, but from his first successor, Álvaro del Portillo. And it is not found in any homily or government text, but in a private letter dated June 30, 1975, just four days after the death of the founder.

In that letter, which was meant to serve as a testament of fidelity for the members of the Work, Del Portillo wrote a plea that would become famous over time, and which Opuslibros has rescued in a recent article signed by Darian Veltross:

«And I also pray that if, over the centuries, someone—may it not happen, we are certain—were to perversely corrupt that spirit that the Father has bequeathed to us, or divert the Work… that the Lord may confound him and prevent him from committing that crime, causing that harm to the Church and to souls.»

It was not a devout hyperbole. Del Portillo was formulating, in the language of his time, a kind of charismatic intangibility clause: that no one, neither inside nor outside the Church, could alter the spirit bequeathed by Escrivá. A curse in the strict sense, though clothed in piety.

The text does not say who that “someone” might be, but the context of 1975 makes it clear: it is not about external enemies, but about authorities or members who, from within, might wish to reinterpret the Work. That is why it sounds with an almost prophetic echo at this historical moment, when the Holy See is preparing to promulgate the new Statutes that will radically transform the legal figure of Opus Dei.

The clause that turns against its author

Veltross observes that, according to the internal logic of Opus Dei, that plea could even reach the Pope. What was born as a guarantee of fidelity thus becomes a mirror: if the reform is seen as a “deviation” from the founding spirit, those who promote it—the Prelate, the members who accept it, and Popes Francis and Leo XIV—would fall into the category of those whom Don Álvaro asked God to confound.

The so-called “curse of Don Álvaro” has no legal value, but it does have immense symbolic weight. It represents the latent tension between ecclesial obedience and Opus Dei’s self-conception as a work directly willed by God, not as an initiative of a founder within the Church. And it is precisely that tension that today surfaces with the reform.

An echo that resonates half a century later

Fifty years later, the phrase written in the days of mourning for Escrivá’s death returns with another light. Don Álvaro asked that the Lord confound whoever tried to “pervert the spirit” of the Work. Today, as the Holy See modifies its structure, many inside and outside Opus Dei wonder if that plea still resonates—and about whom.

Is Leo XIV, the successor of Francis and heir to the reform, the unwitting recipient of that invocation? Or is it rather the institution itself that, unable to distinguish between charism and structure, has become entangled in its own prophecy? Hard to know. What is certain is that the phrase written to safeguard a spirit has become, half a century later, the portrait of its exhaustion.