Anyone who has carefully read the simple note of the property on Lagasca Street 116 —corner of Diego de León, Madrid— will have understood better than with a hundred Vatican communiqués why Rome can reform statutes, but not touch bricks. The estate, which is none other than the central headquarters of Opus Dei in Spain, does not belong to the prelature, nor to the prelate, nor to any ecclesiastical entity. Its owner is an anonymous society called Inmobiliaria Urbana Moncloa, S.A., holder of one hundred percent of the bare ownership since 1966. And the use of the building, for its part, corresponds to a civil foundation —Fundación Iniciativas de Acción Social— that enjoys one hundred percent of the usufruct for twenty years, from 2013 to 2033, according to the notarial deed of Francisco Javier Vigil Quiñones Parga. The building is registered as “Service Building”, not as a temple or ecclesiastical property, and it still carries an old mortgage from Banco Crédito Construcción. In summary: Opus Dei works there, but legally it is not their house.
This scheme —a commercial company as owner, a civil foundation as usufructuary, and no direct link to the Church— is not an anomaly. It is the same pattern we find in Torreciudad, where the sanctuary and its surroundings are registered in the name of Inmobiliaria Aragonesa, S.A., with a temporary usufruct in favor of the Patronato de Torreciudad until 2035. In both cases, the model is identical: the spiritual work is sustained on a hermetic civil structure, designed to be untouchable. Neither the Pope, nor the bishop, nor the prelate can dispose of those assets. The ownership belongs to the world of private law, and the usufruct —which is what grants access to religious or institutional use— expires over time. Rome can promulgate decrees, but the notary has the last word.
The irony is that, while the Vatican dreams of “reordering” the map of ecclesiastical works, the most institutionalized movements learned long ago to shield their patrimony on the margins of Rome. Not out of rebellion, but from a mix of prudence, corporate pride, and practical sense. Since the mid-20th century, when the new charisms began acquiring properties, schools, universities, and training centers, they did so almost always through civil companies and patrons. The Church, which has never developed an effective canonical commercial law, tolerated those structures growing under the idea that “everything stays in the family.” Today it discovers that “family” is an elastic word: Rome can change statutes, but no one moves the property titles.
Something similar happened with the Legion of Christ. After the scandal of Marcial Maciel, many wondered why the Vatican did not dissolve the congregation. The answer was as simple as it was brutal: there was nothing to inherit. All the relevant properties —universities, residences, schools, foundations— were registered in the hands of civil legal persons, beyond the reach of the Holy See. Suppressing the Legion would have meant assuming its debts and lawsuits without access to its assets. Rome preferred the practical: intervene it halfway, change its vocabulary, and let it die of vocational inanition. A pious corpse that no one has to bury. In the end, the same logic applies today to Opus Dei: reform, yes; touch, no.
The note from Lagasca and the one from Torreciudad are not isolated documents, but chapters of the same legal novel. Both reflect the same phenomenon: Catholic institutions that, in the name of prudence, built their own patrimonial independence. Rome can reform charisms, but not deeds. It can rename prelatures, but not change registry holders. It can speak of charity and poverty, but the capital is where it has always been: in companies and foundations with CIF, balance sheet, and board of trustees.
The result is a paradox that borders on the theological. The movements that were born proclaiming their unconditional fidelity to the Church have become, for patrimonial purposes, civil entities shielded against it. The Holy See, for its part, still fails to understand that its spiritual power evaporates when it has no legal control over the works it claims to oversee. There is no solid canonical commercial law, and as long as that vacuum persists, every attempt at reform will end in the same realization: Rome can preach poverty, but the assets are in the hands of notaries.
In Madrid, the Opus Dei headquarters is not a temple, but an urban asset with owner and usufructuary perfectly differentiated. In Torreciudad, the sanctuary and its surroundings form two distinct registered estates: one, the temple; the other, the services complex and accesses. And both under the same civil umbrella. The Church has allowed for decades that donations, inheritances, and legacies be collected in foundations outside its control, and now, when it tries to intervene, it discovers that ownership has slipped from its hands. What was once considered prudence reveals itself as an irreversible strategy of independence.
Rome can continue talking about reforms and charisms, about pastoral renewal and more synodal structures. But reality is stubborn. Neither Torreciudad, nor Lagasca, nor the Legion, nor so many other works are any longer in its legal orbit. They are planets that orbit by inertia, sustained by the money of the faithful and by a legal framework that makes them untouchable. And when someone from the Vatican palaces wonders what became of all that, a simple answer will suffice: the papers were in order, but in the name of others.