THE OPUS DEI WAS FOUNDED AS A RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION IN 1928 by Father Escrivá de Balaguer in Spain. Its existence is public but its membership has always been secret. During the period of the Civil War it went briefly underground, to re-emerge in Nationalist Spain. In 1947 it was recognized as the first Secular Institute by the Pope and the centre of the organization moved to Rome. It has been most successful in Spain where it profited from the extremely favourable conditions created by Franco's government for Catholic groups. Its aim was the re-conversion of all social classes and especially intellectual and bourgeois groups to a universal Catholic spirituality. It worked towards this aim through the positioning of its members in places of power within society: preferably in university chairs, banking, business or bureaucratic positions. Each member had the duty to lead an upright Catholic life and at the same time to convert the maximum possible number of his fellows to active Catholicism (or to membership of the Opus Dei), through the example of his life. This implied not only proficiency and diligence at work, but also the traditional spiritual values such as humility, chastity, obedience, etc. Escrivá de Balaguer argued that the further Opus members could rise up the social ladder the more influence they would have on society in general and on their fellows.