Work for the love of God and for a place in heaven

Abstract

This article is about how the numerary auxiliaries, hundreds of women who work for Opus Dei in Mexico, dedicate their lives and efforts to this religious organization under the promise of obtaining a place in heaven,…and a basic and insufficient income. The numeraries are a vulnerable group, made up of women who come from the countryside and marginal neighborhoods of the cities, or from indigenous communities. In Work 2 they are instructed to love God through the “charisma,” a set of rules and beliefs that help them fulfill a life plan in their search for entry to heaven. They work confident that following this path they will find salvation while they take care of the Opus Dei centers by carrying out activities such as domestic cleaning. Since the organization’s finances are not transparent, it is difficult to establish whether these women are being used as cheap labor. Opus Dei directors claim that the organization is in deficit due to all the social work they carry out and that they can only pay a very limited salary to these women. But based on interviews, fieldwork, bibliographical and online research, this article shows that this statement is probably not correct and that some kind of violation of their rights exists in the relationship between Opus Dei and the numerary auxiliaries.