LONDON (CNS): The director of Opus Dei in London has formally complained to the BBC over an alleged “defamatory portrayal” of the organisation in a television police drama.
The director, Jack Valero, said two episodes of Waking the Dead, shown on the BBC on January 21-22, depicted Opus Dei members as violent and hypocrites.
“In these programs Opus Dei was portrayed as an organisation of murderers, thieves and adulterers who justify and cover up evil actions while hiding behind a veneer of hypocritical piety and penitential rituals of self-flagellation,” Mr Valero said in a January 23 letter to the BBC.
Mr Valero told the BBC it was wrong to name Opus Dei and then attribute fictional characteristics to its members.
He said it would have been more fair to invent an imaginary organisation for the storyline.
He said the BBC’s depiction appeared to have been lifted straight from the pages of The Da Vinci Code, the international bestseller by US author Dan Brown.
