Founder of the Institute of the Incarnate Word found guilty of abuse by the Church's tribunals

Two ecclesiastical tribunals, the Special Penal Tribunal of First Instance and the Tribunal of Appeal, reached "moral certainty" as to the responsibility of Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela, founder of the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE) and of the Servants of the Lord and of the Virgin of Matará (SSVM), for "a crime against the sixth commandment, perpetrated with violence against several persons," according to canon 1395 § 2. A communiqué of the Holy See, signed by the prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life, Sister Simona Brambilla, and by the two pontifical delegates — Bishop José Antonio Satué Huerto, bishop of Teruel and Albarracín, and Sister Clara Echarte — made the conviction public.

An Argentine priest who died in Genoa in 2023, Buela had been accused of sexual abuse by some twenty seminarians since the 2000s. The two delegates officially notified the sentence to the provincial superiors of both institutes at a meeting held in Rome on 14 September. Of diocesan right, founded in the diocese of San Rafael (Argentina) and established in that of Velletri-Segni (Italy), the two institutes have spread to more than twenty-five countries. Cardinal Santos Abril y Castelló had been pontifical commissary of the male branch before concluding his service in 2025, upon the appointment of the two delegates.

What tradition teaches

The sixth commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," does not concern adultery alone. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches, with St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, that this precept "extends to all that is dishonourable and impure," and that in forbidding adultery God "has at the same time forbidden every kind of impurity capable of defiling the body." St. Paul draws from it the sentence the Catechism recalls: "Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor the effeminate nor liers with mankind ... shall possess the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. VI).

And when the victim is entrusted to the one who sins, the fault is doubled. Our Lord pronounced on scandal words without appeal: "he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matt. XVIII).

The measure

A founder who abuses the seminarians committed to his formation does not commit a private weakness: he sins against the sixth commandment in the whole extent that tradition recognizes in it, and to the sin of the flesh he adds the scandal of those he was to lead to God. The "violence against several persons" retained by the judges is precisely what the divine Law brands in the severest terms. That the sentence falls after the death of the guilty man does not weaken it: the communiqué says it seeks to "restore the truth as an act of justice" toward those who were wronged, and the restoration of truth is a duty that tradition has never made depend on the life of the sinner.

For the faithful, the lesson is ancient and firm. The holiness of a work is not measured by its expansion — twenty-five countries and two institutes — but by the fidelity of those who bear it to the law of God. Where that law is betrayed, no foundation, however vast, covers the fault.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the sixth commandment. Holy Scripture: 1 Corinthians VI, 9-10; Gospel according to St. Matthew XVIII, 6-7 (Vulgate).