Opus Dei, portrayed as a powerful, ultraconservative Roman Catholic faction riddled with sadomasochistic ritual, one of whose members commits serial murder in pursuit of a threatening secret about the church in Dan Browns book, fervently object to their portrayal in his book.

Opus Dei’s rejects claims:

The Da Vinci Code claims that Opus Dei’s members are monks. There are no monks in Opus Dei.The Da Vinci Code describes Opus Dei as endorsing criminal behavior; Opus Dei condemns criminal activity they insist.
The Da Vinci Code calls Opus Dei a “cult” and a “sect.” In fact, Opus Dei is a fully integrated entity of the Catholic Church.
The Da Vinci Code claims that women cannot enter the front doors of the Opus Dei headquarters. Instead, they must use a side entrance. In fact Opus Dei claim, men and women use the front entrance of the headquarters building.

Among the more famous  ranks of the self flagellating member-include powerful public figures such as Mel Gibson and Toni Blair.

The Cathars were a religious group who appeared in Europe in the eleventh century, their origin seems to be something of a mystery though there is some evidence that their ideas came from Persia by way of the Byzantine Empire. So they fit in well with the Sauniere Mystery, as yet another mysterious element. Records from the Roman Catholic Church mention them under various names and in various locations. Most details that can be found about them are some what vague and fudged. Catholic theologians debated with themselves for centuries whether Cathars were or a Christian ‘cult’ or heretics. The question is apparently still open to debate. Roman Catholics still refer to Cathar belief as “the Great Heresy” though the current official Catholic position is that Cathars are not in fact Christian. The main sticking point and problem that the Catholic Church seems to have had with them is that they refused to believe in the two fundamental ideas the church held dear, the priesthood and that churches were sacred holy buildings. There is also some evidence that they believed in the equality and parity of men and women- not a popular medieval notion!

On Sunday, tens of thousands of pilgrims celebrated the 90th anniversary of the famous visions seen at Fatima, Portugal. In response to the continuing interest in the “third secret” given to the three shepherd children, which is rumored to have predicted the end of the Catholic church, the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope’s second in command, has stated that the church did a full disclosure of the third secret and continuing speculation that there is a “fourth secret” is qualified as “pure fantasy”.

The relics of Joan of Arc, the Catholic saint who was burnt at the stake in 1431, are a forgery and are probably derived from a much older Egyptian mummy, a study has found. A forensic scientist has shown that the bones and linen fragments discovered in the attic of a Paris pharmacy in 1867 were not those of a woman who had died in the 15th century.

Instead, it appears that the bones belong to a person who had died some time between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC, and had been embalmed in the manner of ancient Egypt.