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Paul Bompard claims Jesuits are particularly opposed to Opus Dei and uses my name as evidence ("Sainted or tainted", THES , June 22).

I am not a "British Jesuit". I left the Society of Jesus in 1975. My book, The Secret World of Opus Dei , was not published until more than a dozen years later, in 1989.

I thought then, and continue to think, that Opus Dei is an illiberal organisation. But I have also come to realise that it is no more so than a number of other recent "movements" in the Roman Catholic church.

Michael J. Walsh
Heythrop College
University of London