OPUS DEI, the Roman Catholic organisation portrayed as a sinister and violent cult in The Da Vinci Code, is looking forward to becoming “the best-known group in the Catholic Church” as a result of the book.

In contrast to a Vatican statement last week condemning the 40-million bestseller, Opus Dei and the Catholic Church in England and Wales intend to capitalise on the interest created by the book to win converts.

The Archbishop of Westminster’s director of public affairs, Austen Ivereigh, will make a statement tomorrow setting out the Church’s position on the book and the forthcoming film. The bishops, including Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor, are intending to remain aloof from the controversy but are understood to regard the book and film as “teaching opportunities”, not heresies.

Writing on Opus Dei in today’s Spectator, Mr Ivereigh — who is not a member of the organisation — says that the Catholic Church is approaching the portrayal of the Opus Dei monk Silas in The Da Vinci Code as murderous and masochistic, as an opportunity to “turn lemon into lemonade”.

Mr Ivereigh says that Opus Dei has benefited already, with some new recruits hearing about the organisation through the book.

As Opus Dei’s spokesman, Jack Valero, and his colleagues rush between television studios, “it is hard to remember that this was once the Catholic Church’s most defensive organisation, obsessed with secrecy and taking an almost perverse pride in the media’s hostility,” Mr Ivereigh said.

He continued: “Once the whipping boy of progressive Catholics, long associated with shadowy Spanish politics and Vatican intrigues, the face of Opus Dei is now Valero’s: cheery, energetic, transparent, as open as its doors.”

This approach is at odds with that of Monsignor Angelo Amato, the No 2 at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who last week called on Catholics to boycott the film and organise protests. He said that if “such lies and errors had been directed at the Koran or the Holocaust, they would have justly provoked a world uprising”.

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