After her death, strange signs appeared.

The real estate billionaire Robin Arkley
— the man who had provided the money to lobby for Roberts and Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court
— invited the Leos to spend some time at his ranch in California.

On the way there, they spent a night in a hotel in San Francisco.

After checking in, they went up to their room and Margaret’s younger sister Elizabeth rushed over to a bowl of complimentary candy and dug her hand into it.

In it, she discovered a Sacred Heart medal.

On the last day at the ranch, Leo’s wife Sally came across another medal.

A few weeks later, someone visiting Leo at work told him they found another medal in their airplane seat.

The Leos told friends that they were convinced these medals were signs from heaven that Margaret was both safe and still with them.

The experience would deepen his faith, marking him out as a crusader
— and a target for Opus Dei.

As chaplain of the "Catholic Information Center",
the Opus Dei chapel and bookshop on K Street,
just a stone’s throw from the White House, #Father #Arne #Panula introduced a number of new initiatives in the early 2010s
to generate a steadier stream of donations
— and to better integrate the movement with wealthy Catholics.

Blue-eyed and silver-haired, Father Arne was a big figure within Opus Dei.

For a period in the nineties, he was the organization’s most senior man in the United States.

A native of Minnesota, he had grown up in a small town on the shores of Lake Superior and had joined the Work while at Harvard.

He moved to Rome after graduating, where he lived alongside the Opus Dei founder #Josemaría #Escrivá and trained to become a priest.

After ordination, he moved back to the States to take on the role of chaplain at "The Heights",
an Opus Dei school in Washington, which was still in its infancy.

During his forty years in the movement, he had also spent some time in California, and had become a close friend of #Peter #Thiel, the billionaire entrepreneur who helped found PayPal and who had been an early investor in Facebook.

On long hikes in the Marin headlands, just north of San Francisco, the two men bonded over their shared disdain for government
— and the dangers of liberal attempts to correct the ills of society through policies like #affirmative #action.

His first big initiative at the "Catholic Information Center" copied a popular strategy that had proved lucrative in almost every industry:
the awards dinner.

By bestowing an award on Washington’s most respected conservative Catholics,
and then hosting a lavish dinner in their honor
— to which all the city’s wealthy Catholics were invited
— he generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single evening
and established the CIC at the heart of this influential community.

And so the ⭐️John Paul II Award⭐️ was born in 2012.

The inaugural award went to Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Archbishop of Washington,
who was popular with conservative members of his flock and who had recently stoked controversy by becoming one of the most senior members of the Church to sign the #Manhattan #Declaration.

This was an ecumenical statement drafted by Robert George, and co-signed by the Opus Dei operative Luis Tellez, Maggie Gallagher, and other members of the Catholic right,
which called on Christians not to comply with laws permitting abortion, same-sex marriage, and other practices that went against their beliefs.

The following year the award went to George Weigel, a biographer of Pope John Paul II and a big figure within the American Catholic right.

The Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, an influential and wealthy Catholic brotherhood;
the founder of the Becket Fund, a lobby group championing religious rights;
and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would all become recipients over the next few years.