Officials with oversight of the troubled Institute of the Incarnate Word underlined Thursday that Church tribunals reached “moral certainty” that the order’s late founder was responsible for abuse, amid ongoing denial from some members of the group.
A statement on the IVE’s official website, dated Sept. 24, said the clarification was intended to be both an act of justice toward those harmed by Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela’s actions and to accurately inform the institute’s members as the order undergoes reform.
The statement was issued after a Sept. 14 meeting in Rome between the pontifical delegates overseeing the IVE and its female counterpart, the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará, the provincial superiors of the two institutes, and officials from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
Days after the Rome meeting, an unsigned statement attributed to the IVE’s major superiors argued that Buela’s guilt could not be communicated to members as legally established because the priest died in 2023 before canonical proceedings had concluded.
In a Sept. 23 letter sent privately to members of the IVE and SSVM — obtained by The Pillar — the pontifical delegates urged members to “accept decisively and responsibly” the “painful truth” of Buela’s responsibility for abuse as “unequivocally established by the Church’s tribunals.”
“We can no longer continue putting forward fallacious arguments that lead us away from the truth and, therefore, from God,” said the letter, signed by Bishop José Antonio Satué Huerto, the IVE’s pontifical delegate, and Sr. Clara Echarte Oñate, F.I., the pontifical delegate of the SSVM.
“It is urgent to change our perspective toward the victims, who in fact first suffered the founder’s wrongdoing and then the attitude of both institutes, which on many occasions cruelly discredited and marginalized them, as we have been able to verify through our own experience.”
The flurry of statements is the latest development in a decades-long Vatican effort to reform the two institutes that, together with a secular third order and contemplative branches, make up the Religious Family of the Incarnate Word. The group, which was founded in Argentina in the 1980s, has roughly 2,000 religious members in more than 40 countries.
A special canonical tribunal was established in 2020 to consider the allegations against Buela. The tribunal concluded in 2021 that Buela had committed an offense against the sixth commandment “with violence” against five current and former IVE members, prompting an appeal.
An appeal tribunal conducted a further investigation and confirmed the finding on March 30, 2023. While the appeal tribunal reached its conclusion with moral certainty, it was unable to issue a published judgment because Buela died 24 days later, on April 23, 2023.
The Sept. 24 statement — signed by Satué, Echarte, and DICLSAL’s prefect Sr. Simona Brambilla, M.C. — said that accepting the finding was a necessary part of the reform process, which seeks to distinguish “between the gift of the Spirit granted for the building up of the Church and the founder’s personal limitations or actions.”
The unsigned statement that appeared after the Rome meeting condemned abuse, but claimed that it was not possible to determine Buela’s guilt or innocence.
“Given that the penal proceedings did not conclude because of the death of the accused, it is not appropriate for the institute to pass a judgment of guilt upon the founder or to consider legally concluded a process that did not reach its completion,” said the statement, published on the website verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info.
The pontifical delegates’ Sept. 23 letter, shared with The Pillar, noted that DICLSAL had sent members of the two institutes a letter in January 2025 providing extensive information about Buela, following the canonical proceedings.
“During these months, we have been able to witness personally the pain and difficulty that accepting it has caused some of you, to the point of considering it unbelievable, given your personal experience of Fr. Buela and the image of him that had been conveyed and consolidated within the institutes,” the letter said.
The pontifical delegates described the resistance to acknowledging the finding against Buela as “one of the principal obstacles to carrying out the mission entrusted to us by the Holy See.”
They said they had therefore advised DICLSAL to expand on the information about the priest provided in the dicastery’s January 2025 letter to members. This led to the Sept. 14 meeting in Rome and the pontifical delegates’ letter to members.
“This painful truth also presents an important challenge for the institutes founded by Fr. Buela and for all their members,” Satué and Echarte wrote.
“The path now being asked of both institutes and of each of their members also entails a necessary discernment concerning their charismatic heritage. In particular, it is necessary to distinguish more clearly between the person and experience of the founder and the founding charism recognized by the Church and embraced by the members.”
The IVE’s constitutions define its specific purpose as “inculturating the Gospel — that is, prolonging the Incarnation in every person, in the whole person, and in all manifestations of the human person.”
The pontifical delegates said that, in addition to distinguishing between the charism and the founder, it was “indispensable to begin, without further delay, a serious process of revising the constitutions and, more broadly, the entire proper law of both institutes.”
“This revision should not be understood as merely a formal or editorial updating, but as an integral part of the ecclesial discernment required today,” they wrote.
“It will be necessary to review the norms, structures of governance, formation processes, community and apostolic practices, and the ways in which authority is exercised. Only in this way can the proper law genuinely serve the gift received and its ecclesial fruitfulness.”
They added: “The Holy See expresses its confidence that, through this clarification, the truth concerning the conduct of Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela will be properly acknowledged.”
“It will be our responsibility to continue along the path already begun and to provide the necessary guidance to adequately address the victims, to foster the necessary discernment concerning the life of the institutes, to accompany the correct interpretation and living out of their respective charisms, and, finally, to determine appropriate criteria for the use of images and writings of Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela.”