A praying room at an Opus Dei center in France
© AFP Ilan GarzoneVATICAN CITY (AFP) - "I'm convinced that an evil, like the 'Da Vinci Code' can give birth to good," said Vatican Cardinal Julian Herranz, a member of Opus Dei.
"I am sure that the film will eventually be a boomerang for the enemies of the Church, in the same way that the book has been," Herranz, president of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, told the weekly newsmagazine Panorama.
Spanish bishop Javier Echevarria, the organisation's Vatican appointed prelate, said the controversy raised by the best-selling book and the Hollywood film to be released next week had resulted in huge publicity for Opus Dei.
"The visits to the Opus Dei website are running at about three million a month. Our strategy is one of transparency," Echevarria told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
The organisation has steadfastly refuted claims in Dan Brown's best-selling novel which portrays Opus Dei as a secretive and violent group.
The main theme of the book, which Brown has been at pains to point out is fiction, is that Jesus Christ had children with Mary Magdalene and their bloodline continues and that Opus Dei will stop at nothing, not even murder, to repress that story.
"What upsets me are the grotesque lunacies about our Lord and our holy mother Church," said Echevarria, who for 30 years was private secretary to the organisation's Spanish founder Jose Escriva de Balaguer, canonized by the late Pope John Paul II in 2002.
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