LIMA - The long pontificate of John Paul II boosted the influence of the conservative Opus Dei within the Roman Catholic church, a movement admired by some and feared by others.
The criticism is most intense in Latin America, where many analysts say the late pope appointed the first ever Opus Dei cardinal in Peru to counter advocates of liberation theology, which some in John Paul II's Vatican leadership considered a communist "Trojan horse".
Opus Dei, which is Latin for "God's Work", was founded in 1928 by Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, a one time Spanish priest who was declared a saint by the pope in 2002.
It says its aim is to promote the evangelising mission of the church through members daily and professional lives.
It claims 80,000 members around the world including government ministers, cardinals and top businessman. John Paul II's spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls is one of the best-know members. Britain's Education Secretary Ruth Kelly has admitted she receives spiritual guidance from the movement.
Most however are just ordinary professionals, known in the movement as "numeraries" who have made personal and financial commitments to Opus Dei.
The movement says it is "contributing to the sanctification of the world, by making the gospel present in all human endeavours."
But critics accuse Opus Dei of being a secretive and manipulative presence within the church.
At the start of the bestselling fiction book, "The Da Vinci Code", the story starts with an Opus Dei member killing the curator of the Louvre museum. The book has infuriated the Opus Dei leadership.
But any bad publicity did not affected Opus Dei's standing within the Roman Catholic church.
After the death of John Paul II on Saturday, Opus Dei's current leader Bishop Javier Echevarria, released a statement praising the "enormous spiritual and moral prestige" of the pope.
The appointment of Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani as archbishop of Lima in 2001 was seen as one of the key moves by John Paul II in the conservative backlash against liberation theology, which grew in Latin America from the 1970s.
During the heyday of liberation theology, which taught that Christians must work for social and economic justice for all, priests and bishops called for a more active political role in improving conditions for the army of poor across Latin America. The Vatican swiftly had many replaced or silenced.
"Cipriani is a dramatic symbol of the rightward swing of the church in Latin America" during John Paul II's 26 year reign, according to Luis Pasara, a specialist in religion at the University of Salamanca in Spain.
Peru is a poor country marked by the uprising of the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas. Now it is the country in Latin America with the most Opus Dei bishops. At least five of its 54 bishops belong to the movement.
Pasara said the archbishop had "identified himself with the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and insulted human rights advocates during the massacres of Andean peasants."
Susana Villaran, a former minister for women's affairs in Peru and a secular campaigner for liberation theology, said the pope had deliberately chosen Peru for the world's first Opus Dei cardinal.
"Liberation theology was born in Peru and for this reason (the Vatican) chose this country to promote Opus Dei," she told AFP.
But Villaran said that liberation theology had still succeeded in getting support for the poor established in church doctrine.
Liberation theology advocates have given a cautious assessment of John Paul II's lasting legacy.
Leonardo Boff, the Brazilian theologian who the Vatican sought to silence because of his radical views, said Sunday that John Paul II never understood liberation theology.
Boff said the pope's Polish roots, living through Nazi occupation and the Cold War meant he could not see that "the enemy" in Latin America was not Nazism or communism but "the elite without any social sensitivity."
04/07/2005 15:39 GMT