Opus Dei..and the CEO

In the famous book “Da Vinci code” of Dan Brown, he tells among the rest, about a group within Christianity called Opus Dei. This group is quite mysterious. Its worshippers do bizarre things to , torturing themselves sometimes to remind how Jesus was tortured…
In the book, Opus Dei worshipper is trying to protect the secrets of Christianity from exposure, killing people on the way, and is led by the first clergy man of the Opus Dei…no wonder the book was banned in some religious countries.. such as Spain and the Philippines.

Opus Dei is also very reach.

I just finished the book and even went to the movie with my wife. Why do I tell about it?
Well, in my last visit in the Philippines I met one of the most important persons in the Philippines business arena. The meeting and the people were very nice (although no business yet...just nice :-).

After we ended the meeting , heading out, my local country manager, MON, told me suddenly two words “ Opus Dei”.

I immediately recalled “Opus Dei”, had a negative conotation from the book, and asked for explanation and the connection to the meeting.

That’s an interesting thing. It happens , that since in the Philippines they are very much religious, the church controls many assets. Apart from being our country manager, Mon is also lecturing frequently and acts as a patron in his local church.
The clergical influemce is so strong there; two of the board members of that company are priests. More then that, the senior people whom we met – belong to the Opus Dei group.
(By the way - the picture above is the vision of manila from their meeting room)

I never imagined that I would be so closely connected to this group. The only torture I think these people are connected with – is making their business suppliers life very difficult….:-)