Serve: My Lost Years at the Heart of Ireland's Opus Dei

by Anne Marie Allen

Anne Marie Allen was fifteen when she was accepted onto a cookery school course that promised real qualifications and a future in the career of her dreams. Seeking a better life, she moved to the calm and peaceful countryside of the west of Ireland. However, her happiness was short-lived as it became clear she had been tricked instead into a life of domestic servitude to the members of the Opus Dei cult.
She was then whisked away to Rome where she signed her life away with vows to serve. What followed were years of misery in slavery, forced celibacy and traumatic physical suffering under an ambitious and tyrannical institution that demanded perfection, humiliation and pain.
Eventually her family managed to coerce a visit home where they refused to let her return to the Order, and where they began the long process of deprogramming Anne Marie – a task that has been a life-long struggle. Serve is a truly remarkable story of strength and resilience in the face of religious zealotry.

285 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 12, 2025

Reviews

[Mark Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's incredible to think that this organisation is endorsed by the Catholic church and most recent popes. This woman was simply duped then brainwashed. That said, the story is too long, repetitive.