GENOA, Italy (ChurchMilitant.com) – An ultra-conservative religious congregation, sanctioned by Pope Francis when he was cardinal primate of Argentina, is covering up the sexual crimes of its Argentine founder who died in Genoa on Sunday.
IVE posts laudatory statements about its abusive founder
The Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE), which operates in 44 countries, airbrushed out the serial homosexual predations of Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela on its multiple websites when it announced that the founder had “died completely surrendered to the holy will of God.”
Father Buela “died serenely, with all the help of Holy Mother Church and with the plenary indulgence and apostolic blessing personally bestowed by the pope a few days before his passing,” the IVE stated on its official Facebook page.
“Your presence among us is more alive today than ever,” the statement read. “We thank God for the gift of his existence and his priesthood, in exercise of whose ministry, over 52 long and fruitful years, brought so many souls closer to God.”
Hundreds of fans praised Buela, with one noting “that Heaven is partying receiving our beloved founding father!” Another wrote, “He will continue to watch over us from Heaven.”
The IVE, whose 3,000 male and female members take a fourth vow of “Marian slavery” in addition to the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, have refused to acknowledge the founder’s sexual predations and continue to promote a pious fiction of Buela, his books and sermons.
The order has also refused to repent of its close relationship with notorious homopredator and former-Cdl. Theodore McCarrick, who secretly funneled nearly $1 million to the IVE from 2004 to 2017, according to ledgers obtained by the Washington Post.
While McCarrick sent more than $600,000 from the Archbishop’s Special Fund to two popes, Vatican bureaucrats, and officials responsible for assessing sexual abuse allegations against him, the IVE has been the largest single recipient of money from the homopredator’s fund.
McCarrick lived at the IVE’s Venerable Fulton J. Sheen House of Formation in Maryland during his retirement, after residing for a period at the Redemptoris Mater Seminary of the archdiocese of Washington.
The laicized predator cardinal had an IVE priest and two seminarians living in his residence and assisting him in an on-campus apartment, which was separate from the house of formation. McCarrick made significant demands on the seminarians, they later reported.
IVE priest Fr. Andrew Whiting served as McCarrick’s secretary from 2014 through 2017. Whiting was ordained a deacon by McCarrick in 2013 and a priest in 2014. Andy Kmetz, an IVE religious brother, served as secretary to the ex-cardinal, according to the 2018 diocesan directory.
Out of 450 seminarians who attended the IVE seminary in San Rafael, around 275 left the congregation, and half of these stopped exercising the priesthood after many were abused by Fr. Buela, Argentinian news media Infobae reported.
The Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, which opened an investigation into Buela in 2010, admitted to the serial abuse of seminarians.
Abuse victim Luis María de la Calle with Pope Francis
In 2010, following its investigation of Buela, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life issued a decree expressly finding that Buela had engaged in misconduct with adult seminarians.
Clarifying that “no cases of minors have been ascertained so far,” the Vatican removed Buela as IVE superior general and ordered him to reside separately from IVE members in a French monastery.
“It’s like feeling that your father is violating you. You can’t resist,” explained Luis María de la Calle, an Argentinian who was abused by a deacon in the IVE minor seminary at the age of 12 and turned whistleblower against Buela.
Calle was ordained a priest in 2010 and asked Pope Francis to dispense him from the priesthood in 2017, noting that he had suffered “20 years of psychological manipulation in the order.” The Vatican confirmed 20 counts of abuse by Buela.
“Only in 2015 did I realize that the IVE was definitely a cult,” Calle testified. “That year I found out that Fr. Buela was, in truth, a degenerate and depraved abuser of seminarians and priests, like his friend McCarrick.”
The Vatican’s McCarrick report (2020) acknowledged the ex-cardinal’s close links with Buela, noting that the homopredator “encouraged” the activity of the IVE because he felt “its priests were willing to work in tough areas of the world where priests of other religious orders had become disinclined to serve, including the Gaza Strip and Kazakhstan.”
“McCarrick also worked to provide support to the IVE religious order during travel to Rome,” the report noted. “Following issuance of the decree, McCarrick continued to donate to the IVE and facilitated substantial donations to the IVE from wealthy Catholic donors as well.”
After having been banished to the San Isidro de Dueñas monastery in Spain, Buela continued to maintain contact with the IVE. He was sheltered by Cdl. Angelo Bagnasco, former archbishop of Genoa, Italy, in violation of Vatican sanctions.
While archbishop of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis refused to ordain IVE seminarians for at least three years, beginning in the late 1990s.
IVE did not respond to Church Militant’s queries on why it had whitewashed the history of its founder.