Show Notes
The UK has some of the oldest housing in the world. Although the use of lead paint is banned, what happens to the paint already on your walls? Laura Hughes speaks to families fighting for answers and the children poisoned by their own homes. She learns that it’s not only old homes that pose a serious risk.
For more information on how to live safely with lead, please visit the LEAPP Alliance website.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Untold: Opus Dei
The FT’s Laura Hughes speaks to Samantha Power, former head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) who spearheaded efforts to fight lead poisoning globally. They talk about why she got interested in lead poisoning, efforts at supply chain tracing Ecuadorian cinnamon, and the UK government’s new plans for a lead testing trial.
A sleepy Catholic bookshop and events space run by Opus Dei priests in Washington, has turned into a central networking hub for an ascendant conservative movement. Some of the biggest names on the right gravitate around it. People close to Opus Dei say that is not a coincidence.
Over the past decade, elite universities have become home to a network of influential conservative think-tanks fighting against the “woke secular creed”. Meanwhile, at Opus Dei student centres, the next generation of ambitious leaders hear similar moral teachings creep into partisan politics. Is it just ideas that link the two – or more?
Opus Dei’s founder taught his followers that spiritual formation is a continual development of character. But some find that the views spread by Opus Dei do not always match the Church’s official teaching – particularly its attitudes towards women and homosexuality. Insiders describe a complex youth recruitment network that offers some clues to the kind of person Opus Dei molds – and what kind of person it is interested in.
We meet Sarah – a young girl drawn to Opus Dei’s message that professional work can be a path to holiness. At 18, Sarah says goodbye to her family and moves into an Opus Dei centre to learn how to make her work an offering to God. But what she experiences there feels different to the organisation she thought she knew. Sarah chafes at unexpected rules, unquestioning obedience and dehumanising treatment.