Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Is Madonna Leaving Kabbalah for Opus Dei?

Is kabbalah losing its most famous student?

No one can say for sure, but reports are spreading that Madonna is considering a switch to Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic sect arguably most famous for protesting its own vilification in “The Da Vinci Code.”

The rumors suggest that Madonna sought out the group in reaction to recent embarrassments involving her charity, which collapsed amid reports of major monetary waste and mismanagement. The singer co-founded the organization, Raising Malawi, with Michael Berg, a friend and mentor from the Kabbalah Centre, the object of her religious devotion for the past 15 years.

A number of other Kabbalah Centre adherents were involved in the charity fiasco, which England’s Daily Mail pointed out while reporting last week that the singer had met with Opus Dei officials in London, a meeting her publicist wouldn’t confirm.

With no word from the singer, other outlets are investigating the claims, though none have reached a truly conclusive conclusion. Catholic blog OSV Daily Take comes closest, detailing its own efforts to get clarification. The site spoke with the communications director for Opus Dei’s US branch, who told the blog, “We are doing our own checking into this story and it appears to be simply untrue. We are trying to reach the journalist to find out how this got started.”

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.