VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
The Pillar [Washington DC]
January 13, 2025
By Edgar Beltrán
The Vatican has appointed pontifical delegates to take charge of both the male and female branches of the Religious Family of the Incarnate Word, amid concerns that members continue to revere its founder, Fr. Carlos Buela, who was found guilty of sexually abusing seminarians.
The Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life announced Jan. 10 that Sr. Clara Echarte, F.I., and Bishop José Antonio Satué of Teruel y Albarracín, Spain, would serve as pontifical delegates of the female and male branches, with full powers of governance.
The decrees of appointment also impose a three-year moratorium on accepting new members for the religious institutes.
The announcement, issued Saturday, was signed by the new prefect of DICLSAL, Sr. Simona Brambilla, M.C., whom Francis named as the first female head of a Vatican department earlier this month.
The Religious Family of the Incarnate Word, founded in Argentina in 1984, consists of a male branch called the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE), a female branch known as the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará, a secular third order, and contemplative branches.
The announcement of the special governing delegates follows a Vatican decree on December 8 last year, which formally named the delegates and imposed a three-year moratorium on the admission of new members.
In doing so, the Vatican decree cited “severe deficits” in both the male and female institutes, “especially with regard to vocational discernment, the formation of the candidates, the great inexperience and excessively small number of the trainers, the lifestyle, [and] the service of government.”
That document also said members continued to view Fr. Buela “as a priest unjustly persecuted by the Holy See, and the victims are considered false and insincere.”
“The two institutes organize pilgrimages to his tomb, and his writings have been republished and disseminated,” it said.
In 2016, the Vatican confirmed that Buela had been found guilty of sexual misconduct with IVE seminarians.
The institute’s website still shows Buela as its founder, without mentioning his canonical conviction.
Some provinces of the Institute published commemorative videos when he died in 2023, and he received multitudinary funerals in Italy and Argentina with the presence of hundreds of members of both branches.
The Vatican decree also notes that the dicastery has “over the years… followed with great attention the situation, delicate in several respects,” of the IVE, including the founding of the female institute “despite the negative opinion expressed by the then Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life.”
Since its inception in 1984, the institute has had six different pontifical commissaries or delegates in different periods of its history.
The first restrictions on the institute were placed in 2001, when then-pontifical commissioner Bishop Alfonso Delgado announced the closure of the IVE’s seminary in the Diocese of San Rafael, Argentina, where the institute was born.
However, the decision was revisited a few months later, and the institute was instead told to relocate the seminary to Italy.
After years of rumors against Buela, the then-Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life published a decree in January 2010 ordering the “removal of Fr. Carlos Buela from the office of Superior General of the Institute of the Incarnate Word.”
It also obliged Buela to “reside, until further orders, away from the own Institute, in the [French] Abbey La Pierre Qui Vire under the authority of the Abbot who can regulate its contacts with the members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word” due to “inappropriate behavior with young members of the Institute.”
The Vatican later clarified that all of the victims in question were young adults.
In 2016, the Diocese of San Rafael in Argentina said in a statement that “the Holy See determined the veracity of the complaints and the imputability to Father Buela of inappropriate behavior with adults.”
The statement said the Vatican had determined “that he is forbidden to be in touch with members of the IVE; he cannot make any statements or appear in public or partake in any kind of activity or meeting.”
These prohibitions were allegedly largely ignored, however, which prompted the pope to appoint Spanish Cardinal Santos Abril as pontifical commissary of the male branch in 2019.
In 2021, a special canonical tribunal, constituted by Abril, concluded that Buela had committed grave crimes against the Sixth Commandment using violence against five members and former members of the Institute.
Buela appealed the decision, but died in April 2023, before a final decision could be issued.
Cardinal Abril repeatedly cited a lack of cooperation from members in the IVE and, in a 2022 letter, said the former superior general, Fr. Gustavo Nieto, had created a “shadow government, as it had happened with all former commissaries.”
On April 19, 2023 – four days before Buela died – the cardinal sent an additional letter to the institute, in which he highlighted further concerns, some of which seem to have inspired the Vatican’s decision to appoint special delegates to both male and female institutes with full governing control.
Abril expressed particular concern about the number of members who had left the Institute saying that “with incomplete information, 275 religious (most of them priests) have abandoned the IVE: there have been 125 reductions to the lay state, 52 incardinations in other dioceses, 5 processes in the [Congregation] of the Doctrine of the Faith, 11 expulsions and almost 50 exclaustrations [from the contemplative branch].”
Abril added that “IVE has a very distorted map (…) the number of professed religious in the IVE corresponds to two middle-sized provinces in any religious institute, while IVE has 13 Provinces and 4 Delegations (…) in 44 nations and almost 100 dioceses.”
“Many [places where tie IVE is supposed to be present], about 70, can hardly be called communities,” the cardinal said, “having just one or two religious. And the rest of the presences are not even canonically erected.”
Although the cardinal ordered the prohibition of new IVE foundations and the suppressing those established after June 2019, his order went largely ignored, which may have prompted the appointment of a new pontifical delegate for the male branch, and a first delegate for the female branch.
The decree appointing the new delegates mentions that the delegates will have “all government powers” and “full faculties” to change and derogate the constitutions to “start a profound revision of the right [of the Institute].”
The decree of appointment for Bishop Satué to take charge of the male branch notes “a great weakness in the formation process, that is one of the factors that has contributed to the high number of desertions from the institute, which has lost close to 40% of its members since its beginnings.”
“Likewise, [the previous canonical visitation] showed a lack of care for the constitution of its communities, sometimes formed by only two members or by isolated priests with a pastoral task, affecting common fraternal life, which is one of the essential elements of religious life.”
While the Vatican decree recognizes the Institute’s “great missionary push and the commendable personal commitment of many of its members,” it adds that “many difficulties remain unsolved, due to the lack of collaboration of the Provincial Superiors and exiting general government throughout the whole mandate of the Pontifical Commissary.”
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Despite the Holy See’s measures against the IVE, Pope Francis seems to have a personal liking for the missionary spirit of the institute, which was founded in his native Argentina.
During his trip to Papua New Guinea, Francis visited IVE missionaries living in remote areas of the island. He also speaks daily with the Gaza parish priest, Argentinian Gabriel Romanelli, a member of the IVE.
Last week, ahead of the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state of the Holy See, consecrated a landmark new church to commemorate Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan – and the church was entrusted to priests of the IVE.