It is no secret that Rick Santorum is battling the “Creep Factor” personified by the skin crawling way he handled the death of a son who died after living only two hours:
Upon their son’s death, Rick and Karen Santorum opted not to bring his body to a funeral home. Instead, they bundled him in a blanket and drove him to Karen’s parents’ home in Pittsburgh. There, they spent several hours kissing and cuddling Gabriel with his three siblings, ages 6, 4 and 1 1/2. They took photos, sang lullabies in his ear and held a private Mass.
Today we learn that Santorum — as well as Maggie Gallager — sent two of his sons to The Heights, an Opus Dei affiliated school in the outskirts of Washington, DC. Opus Dei is a weird and fanatical Catholic cult that was made infamous in Dan Brown’s book “The Da Vinci Code.” According to the New York Times:
Nearly a third of the lay members are “numeraries,” who commit to lifelong celibacy and to acts of mortification, like the daily wearing of a cilice, a small spiked garter that can puncture the skin.
“Between 10 and 15” of the 70 faculty members are in Opus Dei, said the headmaster, Alvaro de Vicente, a 1983 alumnus who became a numerary while at Georgetown University. The chief financial officer, assistant headmaster and director of communications are also Opus Dei members.
Santorum traveled in 2002 to Rome to speak at a centenary celebration of the birth of Saint Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei. He and his wife were invested as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace of the Knights of Malta in a ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on November 12, 2004.
