Priestly Society of the Holy Cross
association of Catholic priests attached to Opus Dei
The Priestly Society of the Holy Cross is an association of Catholic diocesan priests which is integrally united to the Prelature of Opus Dei.
Part of the society is made up of the clergy of the Opus Dei prelature-members of the priesthood who fall under the jurisdiction of the Opus Dei prelature are automatically members of the Priestly Society. Other members in the society are traditional diocesan priests-clergy who remain under the jurisdiction of their diocesan bishop. They have the same vocation to holiness through ordinary life and work as all the other members of Opus Dei, with a special concern of promoting priestly vocation and being "a leaven of unity with the bishops, and of fraternity within the presbyterate" of their diocese.
Foundation and mission
The Priestly Society of the Holy Cross was begun by St. Josemaría Escrivá on 14 February 1943, and received its first canonical approval a few months later. He was always concerned that his message of sanctification of ordinary work be transmitted also to the secular clergy. He even said that he was willing to leave Opus Dei, as Abraham offered up his son Isaac, to be able to help the clergy. But on February 14, 1943, he said he received an illumination from God on how to continue serving both the laity and the diocesan clergy.
During Mass at the women's center of Opus Dei, he was shown the seal of Opus Dei and of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross: a cross embracing the world.
“Priestly Society of the Holy Cross” enters the record as association of Catholic priests attached to Opus Dei. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Priestly, Society and Holy can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3488662. VIAF identifies the subject as 160937867. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Priestly Society of the Holy Cross” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.