Vatican suppresses Argentine Miles Christi order

The order's founder was laicized in 2020 after allegations of abuse, coercion, and manipulation

The Vatican has suppressed an Argentine religious order founded by a priest who sexually abused adult members, and abused the confessional to cover his tracks.

Members of the Miles Christi religious institute after a 2021 liturgy. Credit: Miles Christi.

The suppression of the clerical religious institute Miles Christi was announced by the Argentine bishops’ conference Thursday, but approved by Pope Francis before he went into the hospital for pneumonia last month, according to a March 6 announcement from the conference.

The suppression is the latest in a series of moves during the Francis pontificate to address issues with religious institutes founded by abusive priests, and to address governance in new ecclesial movements and religious communities.

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Miles Christi was founded by the now-laicized Fr. Roberto Yannuzzi in 1994, as an association of clerics in the Archdiocese of La Plata, Argentina. Drawing on Ignatian spirituality, the members of the institute focused on spiritual direction, retreats, and other initiatives for the spiritual formation of Catholics.

While Yannuzzi was a priest of Buenos Aires, the institute was founded in the La Plata archdiocese after initial members of his group were reportedly dismissed from the Buenos Aires seminary. After initially floundering, Yannuzzi, who said his vision for Miles Christi was divinely inspired, was received in La Plata, where then-Archbishop Carlos Galán was reportedly a personal friend.

From its beginning, the institute’s critics, and former members, said that recruitment efforts were coercive, and that formation methodology was psychologically abusive and sometimes degrading. But the group won plaudits in some circles for a reputation of theological orthodoxy and the appearance of robust commitment to religious life.

Yannuzzi himself has also been accused of illicit financial management, using donations for unauthorized personal expenses and hiding money from confreres and ecclesiastical oversight.

The institute, which had fewer than 60 members, operated three houses in the United States, in the dioceses of Denver, San Diego, and Detroit, where clerics engaged mostly in retreat work, spiritual direction, and campus ministry.

In 2016, the Archdiocese of La Plata began a canonical investigation into Yannuzzi after members of the institute alleged sexual abuse and abuses of authority, and that Yannuzzi had attempted to absolve sacramentally men with whom he had seemingly engaged in coercive sexual behavior — a move which can result in a declared excommunication, and is handled canonically by Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

La Plata’s then-Archbishop Victor Fernandez sent a file on Yannuzzi to the DDF in March 2019. In February 2020 — seemingly after a Vatican-run administrative canonical process — Yannuzzi was forcibly laicized.

According to Miles Christi, the order’s authorities were involved in the investigation in Yannuzzi, and had attempted to expel him from the institute before his laicization was declared.

At the time of his laicization, Miles Christi leaders emphasized that “all the religious and authorities of Miles Christi deeply regret the acts committed by their former Superior General and, from the outset, have accompanied and continue to accompany those who were affected, providing them with all the material and spiritual assistance necessary to cope with this painful situation.”

In 2022, Bishop Jorge Cuerva was appointed a pontifical commissioner to oversee reforms in the order. Cuerva, who became in 2023 the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, spent 20 years in ministry as a villero priest, working in the slums of Argentina.

Cuerva’s appointment to oversee reform in Miles Christi drew some criticism in Argentina, because his alleged ties to the country’s political left raised questions about his objectivity with a group known to be theologically conservative.

But defenders pointed out that Cuerva also had a reputation as a reformer on clerical sexual abuse in Argentina, working to develop safe environment policies for the country.

There has been little public update about reforms to Miles Christi since Cuerva was appointed to oversee and govern the order toward reform.

When Fernandez in late 2022 expelled the order from care of a parish and school in the La Plata archdiocese, some members privately claimed the archbishop had an animus toward the institute itself, and lamented that the archdiocese had not given a reason for pushing the order out of its apostolates.

Fernandez himself has not commented on Miles Christi. But after he became in 2023 prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, some observers in Argentine speculated that Miles Christi would soon after be suppressed.

There is no indication that Fernandez was involved in the Vatican’s decision to suppress Miles Christi, and the cardinal is not a member of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life, which formally decreed the suppression.

The move comes just six weeks after the Vatican formally suppressed the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a Peruvian-based religious community with a sexually abusive founder. That suppression came after a 2023 papally-ordered investigation into the community and several years of Vatican-ordered reform efforts.

And in January, the Vatican 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.

In recent years, Francis has also made efforts to reform the leadership and governance of other religious institutes and structures, including a push for an overhaul to the statutes of the personal prelature Opus Dei.

The Legionaries of Christ — a prominent religious community founded in 1941 by the notoriously abusive Marcial Maciel — have seemingly avoided the prospect of suppression, with Francis praising in 2020 the election of new leaders and recently approved governing documents, which came after years of Vatican involvement in restructuring and reform efforts.

Many Legionaries say the order has made dramatic changes after Maciel’s abuses came to light, while critics of that effort say that Francis has allowed superiors who had been close to Maciel to continue in leadership, limiting the degree to which reform could take root.

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The Pillar’s requests for comment Thursday from U.S. Miles Christi houses have not yet been returned.