 Journalist Luis Carandell, however, recounts testimonies about how members of Opus Dei paid for the insignia of the Grand Cross of Charles III to be made from gold, only to have Escrivá angrily reject it and demand instead one encrusted with diamonds.Carandell holds that this episode was part of a larger pattern in Escrivá's life of ambition for social prestige and the trappings of wealth.Sympathetic biographers, however, insist that Escrivá taught that material things are good, but that people should not get attached to them and should serve only God.