Institute of the Incarnate Word

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Coat of arms of the "family of the incarnate word"

The Institute of the Incarnate Word ( Spanish : Instituto del Verbo Encarnado, religious symbol : IVE) is an institute of consecrated life . The religious community was founded in Argentina in 1984 and is the male branch in the "Family of the Incarnate Word" . The “family” includes the female branch of the “ Servants of the Lord and the Virgin Mary of Matará ” (the Servidoras del Señor y de la Virgen de Matará , SSVM), established in 1988, as well as a third order . The community is in a serious crisis after massive abuses of the order's founder against order members were exposed in 2010 .

Naming, goals and tasks

The name of the community refers to a passage from the prologue of the Gospel of John : "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth" ( Jn 1 , 14  EU ).

On this basis, the order pursues the goal of preaching the Gospel with all its might and thus, in unity with the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church, to become an instrument of an incarnation understood as Christian . The spirituality is on Ignatius of Loyola recycled and Ignatian retreats include in its understanding of the foundation of the apostolate of the IVE priests.

In addition to pastoral care and missionary priests, the community also has a contemplative branch of members who live in monasteries . The monasteries are internally independent, but are subordinate to the general administration of the order.

The remaining members of the order work in parishes , training centers and further training institutions . They teach philosophy and theology in seminars and popular missions , conduct retreats and work with children and young people.

history

The male branch of the family of the Incarnate Word consists mainly of religious priests and in 1984 from which Buenos Aires originating diocesan priest Carlos Miguel Buela founded in Argentina. In 1987 the first foreign branch was established in Peru . In 1989 the institute expanded to the United States , where some priests from the Brooklyn diocese joined the re-establishment, which at that time did not yet have ecclesiastical status. In the same year a study house was established in Rome , in which the members are accommodated during their study time at Roman universities . In the following years, the priestly association recorded strong growth, which was, however, overshadowed by violent conflicts and resistance from church authorities and parishes in which priests of the work were active. The constitutions were completed in 1992. Houses opened in Russia , Jerusalem and Taiwan in 1993 and Ukraine in 1994 . Until 1994, the institute was run by the founder personally.

In the years 1995 to 2001, according to internal investigations, the Vatican took over the leadership of the community for the first time; one after the other, alongside Superior General José Luis Solari (1994–2000), three external priests headed the Institute as papal delegates : 1995–1998 José Antonio Rico OSB ; 1998/1999 Aurelio Londoño CM and 1998–2001 Alfonso Delgado Evers ; the then Bishop of Posadas (Argentina). In 1997 Pope John Paul II established the Apostolic Mission sui juris Tajikistan for the community, of which Carlos Ávila was Superior from 1997 to 2013 . On April 11, 2001 the Vatican moved the General Curia of the IVE to Segni in Italy and ordered the holding of a General Chapter. Since then, the mother house (official founding seat) of the religious community has also been in the diocese of Velletri-Segni in the vicinity of Rome. At the General Chapter in Segni in May 2001, Carlos Miguel Buela was again elected Superior General. On March 24, 2004, the IVE was approved as a congregation under episcopal law by Bishop Andrea Maria Erba , the diocesan bishop of Velletri-Segni.
Together with Father Buela, the congregation was able to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2009.

At the beginning of 2010, the founder of the order, Carlos Miguel Buela, who had also founded the female branch of the community in 1988, was deposed by the Vatican for confirmed allegations of abuse with lifelong effect after previous internal investigations by the Bishop of San Rafael , Eduardo Maria Taussig , and received a ban on contact with his communities . He was sentenced to stay in the French monastery of La Pierre-Qui-Vire . Since there was a risk of obscuration and the IVE did not adhere to the (internally secret) contact block and continued to allow the founder access to his branches, the institute was again placed under supervision on December 16, 2015 on the instructions of the Vatican Congregation . Since then, the leadership has been exercised by the visitators Vito Angelo Todisco, an official of the papal Rota , and the Dominican Philippe Toxé; Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio presided over the VII General Chapter in July 2016, which confirmed the measures taken against the former leadership of the Order . The Argentine Gustavo Nieto was elected as the new Superior General ; the reigning Superior General Carlos Walker until 2015 was transferred to Taiwan at his own request.

Buela himself was sentenced by the church for psychological abuse of addicts, financial irregularities and massive sexual assaults against (adult) members of the order that had been repeated for decades and was suspended from the priesthood in 2013 . At the end of November 2016, the allegations of abuse against Buela and other IVE members came into the public eye again after another abuse case had caused a stir in Argentina, but which had nothing to do with the IVE. As a result, a number of former Argentine IVE seminarians from the Order's ancestral home in San Rafael, Argentina , who they said had been abused by priests of the Institute, went public with details of their experiences. According to reports, there were also underage seminarians among the previous victims. At the same time, it became known that Pope Francis, himself from Argentina, had confirmed the measures taken against the founder of the order in 2013 and ordered his forced stay in the monastery of San Isidro de Dueñas near Palencia in Spain, which he was not allowed to leave without church permission, which he had in the past however nevertheless did. In 2016 he was already living in a monastery in the Archdiocese of Genoa . It also became known that of the 450 priests ordained in the religious community since the 1980s, about half later left the religious institute, including numerous victims of attacks by Buela and other perpetrators covered by the religious leadership in the institute.

Screenshot of the English Wikipedia page from April 2019 with the picture of the founder of the order

With the change of the general government, all provincial superiors had to be replaced by order of the Vatican and the previous incumbents could not be re-elected. In 2013, the long-time superior of Tajikistan was also replaced by the Pope and replaced by Pedro Ramiro López , another IVE priest. The mission remains in the hands of the order. In the summer of 2016, at the same time as the exchange of the male order leadership, the leadership of the female branch of the community, which had been in the hands of a close confidante of the founder for 18 years, was re-elected at an extraordinary general chapter.

Even after the final confirmation of his conviction, which was announced in December 2016 by Bishop Taussig in San Rafael, Argentina, only incompletely adhered to the conditions that forbid him from all public appearances and statements as well as all contact with the religious family. So he should keep in touch with members of the order via social media . He is also mentioned and quoted uncritically on the websites of the religious family. The English Wikipedia page of the order, which has been controlled by Buela supporters for years, shows him as the founder and priest of the order. Instead of staying in a religious house in Argentina that was far away from the management of the religious family, as planned, he stayed in Genoa in 2017 under the protection of Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco , where he met every two weeks with Superior General Gustavo Nieto and gave him instructions based on victim reports . In Genoa he also had contact with minors with whom he was photographed.

organization

The founding house is the seminary of San Rafael (Argentina), where the community is still at home. The General Curia has been in Segni near Rome since 2001 . With the local bishop there, the community is ecclesiastically approved as an institute of diocesan law . Membership figures are currently not available, the latest own information speaks of approx. 1600 worldwide active members of the male and female branches combined (the sister order comprises around 1000 members). In 2007 there was talk of a total of around 1400 members. About 450 religious priests were ordained in the IVE. The religious community is currently divided into the following provinces , some of which have their own monasteries and seminar houses :

The IVE founded its first branch in Germany in 2010 and set up a faith center in the Archdiocese of Berlin .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Fides Service : Nuove, piccole e grandi realtà della Chiesa. Fides dossier of 28 July 2007, p. 18.
  2. ^ The "Verbo Incarnato" is celebrating its anniversary in St. Paul. ( Memento of January 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Communication from the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome of August 1, 2009, accessed on December 4, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b c d El caso Próvolo reavivó denuncia de abuso en el sur , in: Los Andes of December 2, 2016, accessed on December 6, 2016.
  4. ↑ The papal decree of January 22, 2010 became known to the public only in November 2015 through publication on blogs by ex-members.
  5. ↑ Cambia la dirección del IVE y se confirma la condena al P. Buela por abusos. Report on InfoCatólica of August 5, 2016 (Spanish), accessed August 7, 2016.
  6. ^ IVE General Chapter - The Election of New Authorities. Announcement on the Ordensblog from July 14, 2016 (English), accessed on August 7, 2016.
  7. ↑ Una historia de abusos en el Verbo Encarnado ( Memento of December 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) , in: Diario de Mendoza of November 30, 2016, accessed on December 6, 2016;
    Los abusos del fundador del Instituto del Verbo Encarnado , in: Religión Digital , Madrid (Spain);
    Reflotan denuncias de abuso sexual en el Verbo Encarnado , in: Diario Vox , Mendoza (Argentina) ;
    El Obispado mendocino admitió antiguos casos de manipulación y abusos sexuales en el instituto Verbo Encarnado , in: télam , Mendoza (Argentina);
    all from December 1, 2016, all accessed on December 6, 2016 (all in Spanish).
  8. ↑ Madre Anima Christi - Superiora General. Message on the website of the Congregation for Women, accessed August 7, 2016 (Spanish).
  9. ↑ M. Anima Christi kijkt 'met dankbaarheid' terug op tijd as overste Blauwe state. Announcement in the Katholiek Nieuwsblad of July 4, 2016 (Dutch), accessed on August 7, 2016.
  10. ^ Institute of the Incarnate Word founder guilty of sexual misconduct. In: Crux ( CNA ), December 27, 2016, accessed April 6, 2019.
  11. ↑ a b Jesús Bastante: Carlos Buela vive refugiado en una iglesia de Génova, y sigue en contacto con menores. In: Religión Digital , April 17, 2017, accessed April 6, 2019 (Spanish).
  12. ↑ Noticias de Actualidad. Servidoras del Señor y de la Virgen de Matará. Familia Religiosa del Verbo Encarnado. Accessed in April 2019 (in four languages).
  13. ↑ Information on the homepage of the Order ( Memento from September 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 8, 2016.
  14. ↑ Los abusos del fundador del Instituto del Verbo Encarnado , in: Religión Digital , Madrid (Spain); Retrieved December 6, 2016 (Spanish).
  15. ^ Information on the Order's homepage , accessed on December 8, 2016.
  16. ↑ Father Harold - a new face in our parish ( Memento from February 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (Parish message from the Catholic Congregation Ss. Eucharistia in Teltow, 2010).