This article delves into the life and career of Leonard Leo, exploring his connections to dark money, human trafficking, and right-wing conspiracy theories within the Catholic Church.
OPUS: The Cult of Dark Money , Human Trafficking , and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church Leonard Leo was born on Long Island in the mid-sixties. When he was only a toddler, he lost his father — a pastry chef — to cancer. At the age of five, his mother remarried, and the Leos moved to New Jersey, where he attended Monroe Township High School. Leo was chosen as the “Most Likely to Succeed” distinction he shared with classmate Sally Schroeder, his future wife.
Soon afterwards, President Bush picked Leo as his representative to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal agency set up to police religious freedom around the world. Despite its lofty aims, the commission had a tiny budget and its commissioners were unpaid. Within Washington circles, many saw it as nothing more than an office for amateurs who meddled in foreign policy.
AS CHAPLAIN OF the Catholic Information Center, the Opus Dei chapel and bookshop on K Street, just a stone’s throw from the White House, Father Arne Panula introduced a number of new initiatives in the early 2010s to generate a steadier stream of donations — and to better integrate the movement with wealthy Catholics. Blue-eyed and silver-haired, Father Arne was a big figure within Opus Dei. For a period in the nineties, he was the organization’s most senior man in the United States.
The invitation dovetailed with a wider effort at the Catholic Information Center to entice Leo into the Opus Dei orbit. At around the same time as the Humanum conference, Leo was invited onto the CIC board. Their two worlds were already entwined.
Arne Panula was right — a new “Great Awakening” was coming. But it wouldn’t rise up from the student population. Instead, it would emerge out of the dark-money networks. The recruitment of Leonard Leo would cement ties between Opus Dei and the U.S. Supreme Court that had been developing for decades.
Rather than offer a concession candidate, given the proximity of the election, Leo put forward Amy Coney Barrett, a protégé of Antonin Scalia who was openly hostile to. It was no coincidence. A few months earlier, Thomas E. Dobbs, the Mississippi health officer, had lodged an appeal at the Supreme Court after the Jackson Women’s Health Organization — Mississippi’s only abortion clinic — had successfully challenged a state law that banned abortions after fifteen weeks.
Leonard Leo Catholic Church Right-Wing Conspiracy Dark Money Human Trafficking
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