She's respectable and intelligent ... so why does Sarah attach a painful barbed chain to her leg for two hours a day?

Sick and unproductive.......why live at all?


Sarah Cassidy is the sort of no-nonsense, capable woman you might expect to find as headmistress of a ¬primary school. But Sarah doesn't do children, and she doesn't do husbands either.
No. Sarah is 43, single and celibate - and determined to remain so. Each night she fastens a wire chain, known as a cilice, around her upper thigh.
The device has sharp prongs that dig into the skin and flesh, though generally it does not draw blood. To most women, it sounds a peculiarly masochistic practice.
Yet Sarah says it serves a very different purpose: suppressing her desires and atoning for her sins.
Quite what those sins might be it is hard to imagine. For Sarah is not just good, but very, very good. She doesn't drink, abhors drugs and has never had sex.
More than that, she is a senior female figure in Opus Dei, one of the most controversial forces in the Roman Catholic church. Portrayed as shadowy and sinister in Dan Brown's international bestseller The Da Vinci Code, the group has been accused of obsessive secretiveness, elitism, misogyny and criticised for its methods of recruitment.
But it is the 'mortification of the flesh' - a ritualistic form of self-harming practised by many Opus Dei members - that has attracted most widespread condemnation.
Now, in a bid to correct false impressions, Sarah has agreed to meet me to discuss what it is that attracts women like her to what seems such an austere and, frankly, painful expression of faith. I meet her with fellow Opus Dei member Eileen Cole at the group's £7million London headquarters on Chelsea Embankment, where Sarah now lives.
First, though, some background. Opus Dei - Latin for 'Work of God' -was founded in Spain in 1928 by the Roman Catholic priest St Josemaria Escriva. Its doctrine focuses upon the lives of ordinary Catholics, who are neither priests, nuns nor monks yet who believe that everyone should aspire to be a saint.
Today, the organisation claims to have 87,000 members worldwide, about 60per cent of whom live in Europe - among them, former Labour education minister Ruth Kelly. Membership is divided into different categories.
About 70per cent are so-called 'supernumeraries' - married men and women with normal careers. They contribute financially to Opus Dei, and though they are not formally required to practise 'mortification', many choose to do so.
More committed, though, are 'numeraries' like Sarah and Eileen, who pledge to remain celibate, generally live in special Opus Dei houses scattered around the world, and often work directly for the organisation.
Mortification is part of their daily routine, including use of the cilice and periods of fasting.
So every evening, just before she does the washing up, Eileen, 51, straps her strand of barbed wire round her leg and leaves it there for two whole hours, scratching at her skin and digging into the flesh.
It sounds agony, but she insists it's 'less painful than a bikini wax'. And besides, pain is the whole point.
'It's an easy way of knowing you're doing penance,' says Eileen, who lives in an Opus Dei centre in Ealing, West London. 'I wear mine above my thigh. If you go swimming, you don't want to leave a mark from where it has been.
'To be honest, it's the fasting I find most difficult.'
Still, many of us would struggle to comprehend what on earth drives two intelligent, articulate women like Eileen and Sarah to cause themselves pain on a nightly basis.


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Last Edited by Account Deleted by User on 10/05/2010 12:45 AM