There are phrases that, within a religious institution, say much more than they seem to say.<\/p>\n\n
One of them appears in the document drawn up to establish the position of the Institute of the Incarnate Word and of the Servants of the Lord and of the Virgin of Matar\u00e1 on questions concerning its founder. There it is stated that the members accept and abide by the provisions that the Holy See legitimately adopts, “even if we personally do not share”<\/span> <\/strong>their content. <\/p>\n\n Read out of context, the phrase might seem moderate. No one is obliged to immediately understand all the decisions of authority. Religious obedience does not require shutting down one’s intelligence or renouncing all personal opinions. A religious can go through a period of bewilderment, pain, or even incomprehension in the face of an ecclesial decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the problem changes when that reservation does not appear as a personal and temporary difficulty, but as an institutional position expressed on behalf of the community.<\/p>\n\n In the context of a religious family that has been intervened, corrected and subjected for years to the care of the Holy See, “even if we do not personally share” does not simply sound like difficult obedience. It sounds like external obedience with internal reservation. It sounds like administrative acceptance of Rome’s decisions without full acceptance of the diagnosis on which they are based. <\/p>\n\n And that distinction is decisive.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n The Holy See does not seem to be asking only for some procedures to be modified, for certain names to be changed, or for the organizational chart to be rearranged. The question is much deeper. What is at stake is whether the Institute can accept that its problems are not reduced to individual errors, external attacks, or a smear campaign against its founder. <\/p>\n\n The question that Rome seems to pose is another:<\/p>\n\n What happened? Who was harmed? What structures allowed it? What forms of authority, obedience, training, and memory need to be reviewed? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The document, however, seems to respond mainly with a legal and narrative defense by Carlos Miguel Buela.<\/p>\n\n The crisis of the IVE did not begin with the most recent denunciations or with the current intervention. The available documentation shows a longer history of conflicts with ecclesial authority, difficulties of governance, problems related to formation and resistance to pontifical commissioners. <\/p>\n\n The decree of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life of January 22, 2010 constitutes a central document for understanding this history. The text affirms that the Holy See had been interested for years in the conflict of the young institution with the diocesan bishop and in the tensions that existed even with the Argentine Episcopal Conference. <\/p>\n\n The same decree states that, in order to bring about normalization and correct various legal and governmental problems, three pontifical commissioners had been successively appointed, whose work was “systematically rejected.”<\/p>\n\n It is not, therefore, a recent invention of the Institute’s critics. The very documentation reproduced of the decree describes a conflictive relationship with ecclesial authority and a sustained resistance to Roman interventions. <\/p>\n\n The decree also distinguishes between these institutional problems and the complaints subsequently received against Buela. The Holy See claims to have received credible allegations of morally inappropriate behaviour towards young people at the Institute and to have ordered an investigation to verify the facts, their seriousness and their imputability. <\/p>\n\n According to the document, Buela had the possibility of defending himself. He presented a 119-page report with 74 pages of annexes. The investigation did not consist, at least according to the text of the decree, of a simple conviction based on anonymous rumors with no possibility of response. <\/p>\n\n The Congregation concluded that the thesis of a plan to destabilize the Institute was unfounded. It considered the testimonies acceptable because of the number of witnesses, the logic and the coherence of their statements. It also maintained that the veracity of the facts was proven from the statements of the victims and other corroborating elements. <\/p>\n\n The decree ended up removing Buela from the position of superior general and forcing him to reside far from the Institute, under an external authority that was to regulate his contacts with its members.<\/p>\n\n The Roman intervention, therefore, cannot be described simply as a persecution against a fruitful work. The appropriateness of some measures, their form or their consequences can be discussed. But the documentation shows that the Holy See acted in the face of concrete problems and after a procedure in which, according to the decree, evidence was received and the defense was allowed. <\/p>\n\n An important part of the institutional defense consists of affirming that Buela was never tried or that there was never a sentence against him.<\/p>\n\n This assertion may be formally defensible if the word ‘trial’ is used in a very narrow technical sense. The 2009-2010 proceedings were not an ordinary judicial criminal proceeding, but an administrative proceeding that concluded with an out-of-court decree. <\/p>\n\n But that legal precision can become a half-truth if it is used to produce the impression that there was no investigation, defense, evidence or informed decision.<\/p>\n\n The administrative procedure included an investigation. Buela was able to learn of the accusations and presented an extensive defense report. The Roman authority evaluated the testimonies, examined the hypothesis of a conspiracy and reached concrete conclusions about the veracity of the facts, their seriousness and the responsibility of the founder. <\/p>\n\n The difference between a judicial process and an administrative decree is important. But it does not authorize the erasure of everything that happened within that procedure. <\/p>\n\n The text of the decree itself states that the facts were proven and that the seriousness was increased by Buela’s status as founder, superior general and spiritual director. It was not, therefore, a simple prudential measure adopted because Rome did not know what to think. <\/p>\n\n The decree was a decision of the competent authority of the Church, specifically approved by Pope Benedict XVI. Its content could be discussed, appealed, or interpreted. But it could not be honestly presented as if there had been no institutional conclusion about the facts. <\/p>\n\n The distinction between “there was no ordinary criminal trial” and “there was no conclusion on the facts” is essential.<\/p>\n\n The first statement may be technically correct.<\/p>\n\n The second does not adequately describe the content of the 2010 decree.<\/p>\n\n The same confusion appears when speaking of the subsequent canonical penal process.<\/p>\n\n According to the information provided for this analysis, after the administrative procedure there was a canonical criminal process requested by Buela himself and by Father Gustavo Nieto. The first instance, held between 2020 and July 2021, would have declared Buela’s guilt with respect to the crimes examined. <\/p>\n\n Subsequently, during the appeal phase that began in November 2021, the court would have issued a sentence on March 30, 2023, ratifying the guilt.<\/p>\n\n Buela died on April 23, 2023, before that sentence was formally communicated to him. Consequently, the imposition or execution of the canonical penalty did not take place, because the death extinguished the possibility of applying a personal sanction. <\/p>\n\n But these issues are not identical:<\/p>\n\n Buela’s death prevented formal communication and the application of the sentence. It does not necessarily mean that the court had not finished its task or that it had not reached a conclusion. <\/p>\n\n The most precise formulation would not be: “Buela died before there was a sentence.”<\/p>\n\n Buela died before he was formally informed of the appeal sentence and before the canonical sentence could be imposed or executed. According to the information available, the court had already completed its task: the first instance had found him guilty and the appeal had ratified his guilt. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Moreover, according to the information provided, the cases examined in the administrative process were not exactly the same as those considered later in the criminal proceedings. This also matters. It is not a question of a single procedure repeated mechanically, but of different canonical actions, with different objects and moments. <\/p>\n\n That is why it is problematic to use the absence of an executed sentence to create the impression that there were never substantive decisions against the founder.<\/p>\n\n Institutional defense seems to be based on an ambiguity that allows two discourses to be preserved simultaneously.<\/p>\n\n Externally, it can be said that the Institute respects the authority of the Church, that it rejects all abuse and that it does not intend to canonize Buela.<\/p>\n\n Internally, the idea can be maintained that the founder was never really convicted, that the accusations were not definitively proven and that Buela’s memory must be protected against a smear campaign.<\/p>\n\n The absence of an executed sentence facilitates this operation. Also the death of the accused before the formal communication of the sentence. The legal distinction is real, but it can become an instrument of confusion if it is used to erase the conclusions reached in previous proceedings. <\/p>\n\n The formula can be summarized as follows:<\/p>\n\n There was no sentence executed; therefore, there was no conviction.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n But that conclusion does not necessarily follow from the facts.<\/p>\n\n An unexecuted sentence does not amount to a non-existent sentence. A death before formal notification does not automatically transform a decision already taken into a mere suspicion. And the absence of a negative canonization \u2013 that is, of a solemn declaration publicly condemning the founder \u2013 does not eliminate the concrete decisions of ecclesial authority. <\/p>\n\n The question is not only what words the Institute can use legally. The question is what image of reality it transmits to its members. <\/p>\n\n If internal communication reduces everything to “accusations never proven”, then there is a representation that comes into tension with the content of the 2010 decree and with the information available about the subsequent criminal process.<\/p>\n\n Ambiguity is not neutral. It allows the image of the founder to be preserved intact and institutional reform to be presented as a disproportionate reaction to facts that have never been established. <\/p>\n\n In this context, the phrase “even if we do not personally share” should be read.<\/p>\n\n Catholic religious life does not require that all religious immediately understand every decision of the Holy See. Obedience does not eliminate the possibility of experiencing perplexity or suffering. Nor does it automatically make every act of authority an obvious intellectual truth. <\/p>\n\n But there is a difference between obeying a decision that is difficult to understand and institutionally declaring that one does not share the judgment behind it.<\/p>\n\n The first attitude can be a spiritual difficulty.<\/p>\n\n The second can become an organized form of resistance.<\/p>\n\n The document does not simply say that members will abide by Roman provisions even if it is difficult for them. It says that they will accept them even if they do not personally share their content. When this expression appears within an institutional declaration and in the context of a pontifical intervention, its sociological significance is considerable. <\/p>\n\n The message seems to be divided into two planes:<\/p>\n\n It is not a question of affirming that every mental reservation automatically constitutes a canonical infraction. Nor is it a question of issuing a moral judgment on each religious. The question is institutional and sociological. <\/p>\n\n A community cannot reform itself profoundly if it considers that the authority ordering the reform is fundamentally mistaken. It can apply measures, modify documents and change procedures. But it will hardly be able to receive the logic of reform if it maintains an official distance from the Roman diagnosis. <\/p>\n\n That is why the phrase is so revealing. It does not only describe an individual difficulty. It expresses a relationship with authority. <\/p>\n\n The Holy See appears as a juridical authority to be obeyed. But not necessarily as a spiritual authority whose discernment must be received and allow for an institutional conversion. <\/p>\n\n The reform of a religious institute does not consist only in executing orders.<\/p>\n\n A community can formally obey while at the same time resisting the sense of what is asked of it. It can modify its regulations without revising its habits. It can change its authorities without changing its culture. It can pass new norms without altering the way it interprets loyalty, obedience, silence, and authority. <\/p>\n\n Obedience can be reduced to a series of administrative acts:<\/p>\n\n All this can happen without the institution really asking itself what it should learn from Rome’s intervention.<\/p>\n\n Inner reception demands something more. It demands that the Institute allow the intervention to modify its self-understanding. It requires admitting that the problem is not only with the critics, the resentful ex-members, the media, or the bishops who did not understand the work. <\/p>\n\n It requires asking whether certain ways of forming, commanding, obeying, speaking of the founder and managing the suffering of those who leave are not precisely part of the problem.<\/p>\n\n There appears the difference between a cosmetic reform and a real reform.<\/p>\n\n The cosmetic reform preserves the fundamental story and modifies some instruments.<\/p>\n\n The royal reform revises the fundamental narrative to discover which elements of the past should be preserved, which should be corrected and which should be abandoned.<\/p>\n\n In the normal life of a congregation, the founder belongs to the historical origin of the institution. His experience, his spirituality and his intuitions are part of the memory of the institute. But that memory must be interpreted by the Church and discerned over time. <\/p>\n\n The founder cannot remain indefinitely the absolute normative authority of an institution that continues to exist after his death.<\/p>\n\n When the founder becomes the measure of all fidelity, the community ceases to ask itself what the Gospel demands today and begins to ask itself what the founder would have said, wanted or allowed.<\/p>\n\n Then the charism ceases to be an ecclesial gift open to discernment and becomes a personal inheritance to be defended.<\/p>\n\n This transformation can produce a series of effects:<\/p>\n\n It is not necessary to attribute bad faith to all members to describe this phenomenon. An institution can protect itself from criticism because it sincerely believes that it is protecting the truth. It can consider fidelity what, from the outside, seems resistance. It can call persecution an intervention that, from the perspective of Rome, aims to rescue a work from its own deformations. <\/p>\n\n The concept of “founder syndrome” can help describe this dynamic in organizational terms, as long as it is not used as a psychological diagnosis or as an automatic accusation. This is a situation in which the founder becomes so confused with the mission that it is difficult to draw boundaries between fidelity to the charism and personal fidelity to the initiator. <\/p>\n\n The problem is not having had a strong founder.<\/p>\n\n The problem arises when the institution cannot exist without the normative presence of the founder.<\/p>\n\n Formally, the constitutions of a religious institute are not the word of God.<\/p>\n\n They are their own right. They are ecclesial texts. They must receive the approval of the competent authority and can be interpreted, corrected and reformed. Even when they legitimately express a charism, they remain a historical and juridical mediation. <\/p>\n\n They are not Christian revelation. They are not an inspired text. They are not a relic. <\/p>\n\n But a text may not be dogma and yet function as dogma within a community.<\/p>\n\n Constitutions can acquire an almost absolute symbolic authority when they are directly identified with the work of the founder. In that case, reforming them is no longer experienced as a normal operation of ecclesial government. It is experienced as a betrayal of the origin. <\/p>\n\n Modifying a norm ceases to mean adapting one’s own law to current needs. It comes to mean touching the thought of the founding father. <\/p>\n\n Correcting a training system ceases to mean protecting the new generations. It begins to mean giving in to the enemies of the Institute. <\/p>\n\n Revising language about obedience and authority ceases to mean strengthening evangelical freedom. It comes to mean weakening identity. <\/p>\n\n The phrase “defend, promote and live the charism received through the Founder” can be perfectly legitimate in the abstract. Every religious family must preserve and develop the charism received from its origins. <\/p>\n\n But, in a context of crisis, this formulation can function as a wall. It makes it possible to distinguish formally between the charism and the person of Buela, but it leaves intact the doctrinal, formative and constitutional apparatus that is presented as being received “through” him. <\/p>\n\n The critical question is inevitable:<\/p>\n\n Who determines what belongs to the charism and what belongs to the personal culture of the founder?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n If the practical answer remains “the founder,” the separation between charism and person becomes merely rhetorical.<\/p>\n\n The sacralization of a founder does not require an official declaration of holiness.<\/p>\n\n It can be produced through practices, gestures, spaces, stories and objects.<\/p>\n\n According to testimonies and observations provided in the framework of this analysis, Buela’s tomb would continue to be visited in Argentina. Some religious would take soil from the cemetery as a souvenir. The famous Brother Payo has Buela’s infamous private room visited; and Buela’s portraits are still present in all the houses of the IVE and convents of the SSVM. <\/p>\n\n These facts should be carefully distinguished from elements documented in decrees or judgments. They should not be presented as universally verified facts without an independent source for each case. <\/p>\n\n But, if these practices are accurate, their sociological importance is considerable.<\/p>\n\n A tomb can be a place of historical memory. A room can be preserved as part of an institution’s heritage. A portrait can recall origins. None of these gestures, considered in isolation, demonstrates formal devotion. <\/p>\n\n However, when all of them are combined with a reverential language, a permanent defense of the founder and a refusal to institutionally integrate Roman decisions, they produce a symbolic economy of veneration.<\/p>\n\n The question is not whether the word “holy” is officially used.<\/p>\n\n The question is whether Buela continues to be treated as an untouchable, venerable and normatively decisive figure.<\/p>\n\n The Church is not transmitted only through documents. It is also transmitted through what is shown to young people, what is preserved, what is visited, what is honored and what cannot be questioned. <\/p>\n\n The true lived theology of a community does not appear only in its statutes. It appears in its daily gestures. <\/p>\n\n That is why a statement that says “we do not recognize the founder as a saint” can be formally accurate and, at the same time, sociologically insufficient.<\/p>\n\n A community can deny canonization and maintain informal veneration. It can reject the word “saint” and retain a practically untouchable figure. It can distinguish juridically between the founder and the charism while organizing the entire affective and symbolic life around the founder. <\/p>\n\n The central issue is not vocabulary.<\/p>\n\n It is the function that Buela continues to fulfill.<\/p>\n\n The page “Reminiscences revisited”<\/a> \u2013 an anonymous or collective text published in 2016 \u2013 reproduces the 2010 decree and offers a critical narrative of the recent history of the IVE. The text should be read as an interested source and not as a neutral chronicle. But it contains documents and references that allow relevant issues to be reconstructed. <\/p>\n\n Among them appears a pattern:<\/p>\n\n The 2010 decree states that the three pontifical commissioners previously appointed were “systematically rejected.” The same page also reproduces the statement that the decree was not communicated to all the members of the Institute. <\/p>\n\n The text also relates that, after his resignation, Buela would have continued to visit houses of the IVE and the SSVM to strengthen his figure. In relation to that period, it reproduces the phrase attributed to the founder: “the nuns will always defend you.” <\/p>\n\n These elements should not be used without distinguishing between official document, published testimony and interpretation by the authors of the page. But they do allow us to formulate a solid historical hypothesis: the current difficulty in receiving the Roman reform does not seem to have arisen suddenly. <\/p>\n\n Resistance would not only be a reaction to the latest decisions. It could be the continuation of an older institutional culture, formed over years around the defense of the founder and the interpretation of any external intervention as a threat. <\/p>\n\n The current crisis, in that sense, would be no exception. It would be the most recent manifestation of a problematic relationship with authority. <\/p>\n\n A community can carry out orders without accepting their meaning.<\/p>\n\n He can change documents without changing the imaginary. He can reform articles of constitutions while still considering the man who inspired them untouchable. He can receive a commissioner without granting him real spiritual authority. He can listen to Rome while continuing to teach internally that Rome did not understand. <\/p>\n\n This is the most difficult form of institutional resistance to detect, because it does not necessarily appear as open rebellion.<\/p>\n\n There is not always an explicit refusal.<\/p>\n\n Sometimes there is formal compliance, delay, reinterpretation, selective silence, displacement of the problem or conservation of previous symbols. The institution does not say “we do not obey”. It says “we obey legitimately”. It does not say “we reject Rome”. It says “we abide, even if we do not share”. <\/p>\n\n Legality thus becomes the maximum frontier of obedience.<\/p>\n\n The question ceases to be:<\/p>\n\n What is the Church asking us to understand and change?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n And it becomes:<\/p>\n\n What are we legally obliged to do and what can we keep without formally violating an order?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n This transformation completely modifies the meaning of religious life.<\/p>\n\n Obedience ceases to be a willingness to allow oneself to be corrected and becomes an exercise in delimitation: how far authority goes, what it can impose, what it cannot touch and what margin remains to keep the previous identity intact.<\/p>\n\n From a sociological point of view, this is a form of conditional obedience.<\/p>\n\n It does not mean that each member acts in bad faith. It means that the community has not internally integrated the reason for the intervention. <\/p>\n\n The displacement of the moral center is one of the most important problems of the institutional document.<\/p>\n\n The text rejects all abuse. It affirms that it does not intend to canonize Buela. It maintains that it does not declare him innocent. It distinguishes between the person of the founder and the charism of the Institute. All this must be recognized. <\/p>\n\n But the center of gravity doesn’t seem to be on the injured people.<\/p>\n\n The argument focuses rather on the presumption of innocence, the absence of an enforced sentence, the protection of the good reputation of the deceased and the impossibility of legally affirming certain facts as if there were a criminal sentence communicated and enforced.<\/p>\n\n These elements may have legal relevance. But an institution in crisis cannot be limited to a procedural defence. <\/p>\n\n It must be asked what happened to those who denounced, what structures allowed the events, what forms of authority favored silence, what role spiritual dependence played and how the institutional reputation was protected against people who were considered damaged.<\/p>\n\n An authentic reform does not begin by asking only how to preserve the good reputation of the founder.<\/p>\n\n He begins by asking how the centrality of truth, justice and dignity of those who suffered is restored.<\/p>\n\n The question of good reputation is not irrelevant. The Church recognizes the importance of not defaming and not attributing unfounded crimes. But good reputation cannot become a category that prevents listening to victims or integrating the conclusions of the competent authorities. <\/p>\n\n If the defense of the founder’s reputation occupies all the space, the injured people appear as a threat against the institution. Then the memory of the founder becomes a more important organizing principle than the truth about the damage. <\/p>\n\n That contradicts the evangelical logic that the institution itself claims to defend.<\/p>\n\n The reform does not require denying all the fruits of the IVE or the SSVM.<\/p>\n\n Nor does it require claiming that everything about Buela was false, corrupt, or useless. It would not be serious to equate religious conservatism with abuse or claim that all members participated in a culture of cover-up. <\/p>\n\n An institution can produce pastoral fruit while also having serious governance problems. It can attract vocations while at the same time forming poorly. It can carry out valuable works while protecting a culture of silence. It can transmit authentic elements of the Gospel along with warped structures of authority. <\/p>\n\n The existence of fruits does not prove the innocence of the system.<\/p>\n\n Nor do the founder’s defects automatically eliminate any possible spiritual value from the work.<\/p>\n\n The issue is discernment.<\/p>\n\n The Church does not necessarily intervene to destroy a charism. She can intervene to separate the charism from the historical deformations that have accumulated around it. She can try to save that which is evangelical precisely because the institution has not been able to purify itself. <\/p>\n\n That is why the narrative that presents the Roman intervention as an attack on the existence of the Institute is so problematic.<\/p>\n\n The intervention can also be understood as a rescue.<\/p>\n\n Rome may be trying to prevent a work from being caught up in the defense of its founder. It may be trying to restore the charism to the Church, separating it from a personal authority that has become an absolute norm. <\/p>\n\n Charisma, if authentic, should not need everything about its founder to remain untouchable.<\/p>\n\n A true charism can survive criticism, reform, and purification. If it disappears when the founder is questioned, perhaps the institution was not protecting a charism, but a sacralized personal identity. <\/p>\n\n The reform of constitutions is difficult not because there is a lack of jurists, canonists or procedures.<\/p>\n\n It is difficult because touching the constitutions can mean touching the symbolic altar on which the Institute has built its identity.<\/p>\n\n If constitutions are lived as Buela’s normative work, any reform can be experienced as an aggression against the memory of the father. If absolute obedience, the interpretation of the mission, the relationship with the authorities and the internal language have been formulated under his influence, correcting them implies accepting that the foundational culture was not neutral. <\/p>\n\n The reform would force us to recognize that the founder may have left problematic traces not only in his personal behavior, but also in:<\/p>\n\n That is much more painful than modifying a legal article.<\/p>\n\n It means accepting that the problem was not just that one man might have committed abuses. It means admitting that a complete structure could have produced the conditions for his authority to be protected, his decisions to be difficult to question, and his victims to be subordinated to the defense of the work. <\/p>\n\n As long as the founder continues to function as an absolute guarantee of authenticity, that self-criticism will be almost impossible.<\/p>\n\n The system does not need a conspiracy to block itself. An identity that is too closed is enough. <\/p>\n\n The final question is not simply whether the IVE can continue to exist.<\/p>\n\n The question is under what truth it can continue to exist.<\/p>\n\n It can try to keep the foundational narrative almost intact, obey the minimum necessary and hope that over time external pressure will decrease. It can modify some documents, accept certain supervisory structures and at the same time maintain Buela’s memory as the normative axis of internal life. <\/p>\n\n Such a strategy can allow institutional survival.<\/p>\n\n But it would not be a profound reform.<\/p>\n\n It would be conservation under pressure.<\/p>\n\n The other possibility is much more painful: to recognize that fidelity to the Gospel can demand a real critical distance from the founder. To recognize that charism, if it exists, does not belong to one man. To recognize that constitutions can and must be reformed. To recognize that symbolic gestures have formative consequences. To recognize that informal veneration of the founder can block the reception of Roman decisions. <\/p>\n\n It would also require recognizing that victims and damaged people are not a communication problem. They are not a threat to reputation. They are not an obstacle to the mission. <\/p>\n\n They are a real place.<\/p>\n\n Obedience to Rome cannot be reduced to a juridical formula that allows orders to be carried out while preserving the same story internally.<\/p>\n\n The intervention of the Church can only bring about a real reform if the Institute agrees to allow itself to be questioned by it.<\/p>\n\n That is the decisive question.<\/p>\n\n Not if it can exist historically without its founder. That is evident: Buela died and the institution continues. <\/p>\n\n The question is whether it can exist without Buela continuing to function as a normative authority, a guarantee of authenticity and an affective center of identity.<\/p>\n\n If the answer is no, reform will be almost impossible.<\/p>\n\n If the answer is yes, the Institute will have to demonstrate it not only with statements, but with concrete gestures:<\/p>\n\n A congregation does not belong to its founder.<\/p>\n\n He belongs to the Church.<\/p>\n\n Constitutions are not relics. They are instruments. <\/p>\n\n The charism is not the private property of a religious family. It is an ecclesial gift subject to the discernment of the Church. <\/p>\n\n And the memory of the founder cannot be placed above truth, justice, the damaged or ecclesial communion.<\/p>\n\n The Holy See can appoint commissioners, demand reforms, revise texts, and modify governments. But there is something it cannot do from the outside: force an institution to stop inwardly venerating its own image of itself. <\/p>\n\n There is the real test for the IVE and the SSVM.<\/p>\n\n It is not a matter of hating Buela.<\/p>\n\n It is about ceasing to need him to be untouchable.<\/p>\n\n It is not a question of erasing history.<\/p>\n\n It is a matter of putting it under the truth.<\/p>\n\n It is not a question of denying all the fruits.<\/p>\n\n It is a matter of preventing the fruits from being used as a shield against purification.<\/p>\n\n Because a congregation that can only obey Rome as long as the sacred account of its origin is not touched has not yet understood what the Church is asking of it.<\/p>\n\n And perhaps that is the reason why reforming its constitutions is so difficult: not because there is a lack of documents, jurists or procedures, but because touching those constitutions implies touching the symbolic altar on which the Institute has built its identity.<\/p>\n\n This article distinguishes between publicly reproduced official documents, information provided by people familiar with the case, and sociological analysis. The practices relating to Buela’s tomb, room, and portraits are presented as testimonies or information that require specific independent documentation. <\/p>\n\n It is not claimed that all members of the IVE or SSVM share the same attitude, nor that every person who retains a positive memory of the founder participates in a cover-up strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are phrases that, within a religious institution, say much more than they seem to say. One of them appears in the document drawn up to establish the position of the Institute of the Incarnate Word and of the Servants of the Lord and of the Virgin of Matar\u00e1 on questions concerning its founder. There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[106,2071],"tags":[529,2383,2381,654,458,2382,2070,708,2066,606,2316,2378,701,2379,2315,2260,2112,2380],"class_list":["post-10932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-of-the-administrators","category-pontifical-commissary","tag-abuse-of-authority","tag-argentina","tag-canonical-processes","tag-carlos-miguel-buela-en","tag-catholic-church","tag-culture-of-silence","tag-ecclesial-abuses","tag-foundational-charism","tag-holy-see","tag-institute-of-the-incarnate-word","tag-institutional-reform","tag-institutional-resistance","tag-ive-en","tag-religious-authority","tag-religious-constitutions","tag-servants-of-the-lord-and-of-the-virgin-of-matara","tag-ssvm","tag-victims-of-abuse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/e032c551-27e0-41f8-9eb3-4a503688221f.jpeg?fit=1024%2C559&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10932"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10962,"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10932\/revisions\/10962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/verbo-encarnado-ssvm-abusos.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
An intervention that the Institute cannot reduce to persecution<\/h2>\n\n
The problem of saying that “there was never a trial”<\/h2>\n\n
The difference between sentence, penalty and formal communication<\/h2>\n\n
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Ambiguity as a defense mechanism<\/h2>\n\n
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The phrase that reveals obedience with reserve<\/h2>\n\n
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From External Compliance to Internal Reception<\/h2>\n\n
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When the founder ceases to be history and becomes the norm<\/h2>\n\n
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Constitutions: proper law or sacred text<\/h2>\n\n
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The practical sacralization of memory<\/h2>\n\n
The pattern of institutional resistance<\/h2>\n\n
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An institution can obey without changing<\/h2>\n\n
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Victims cannot be left out of the center<\/h2>\n\n
It is not a question of destroying charisma<\/h2>\n\n
The real difficulty in reforming constitutions<\/h2>\n\n
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The pending examination of the IVE and the SSVM<\/h2>\n\n
Can the IVE exist without Buela as a normative figure?<\/h2>\n\n
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Sources and documents mentioned<\/h2>\n\n
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Methodological note<\/h2>\n\n