Vatican confirms in appeal: founder of Blue Sisters guilty of abuse

The Vatican has confirmed in appeal that Argentine priest Carlos Miguel Buela was found guilty of abuse while he was alive. The two religious communities he founded have been ordered to re-evaluate their conduct and thinking. The Vatican tribunal issued its ruling on 30 September in the higher court concerning the allegations against Buela. According to the Vatican, with moral certainty it has been established that the Argentine committed sexual abuse on several occasions during his life. Since the early 2000s about twenty seminarians have come forward with accusations of sexual abuse by him. In 2022 Buela was already found guilty by the Vatican tribunal. He appealed the decision but died in 2023. Now the case has been finally handled by the Vatican. Buela is best known as the founder of the Family of the Word Made Flesh. This religious community consists of two branches: the Institute of the Word Made Flesh for men and the Congregation of the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará, also known as the Blue Sisters, for women. Both groups were founded in the 1980s and experienced rapid growth.

Many young people joined the community. Today the religious family is active in 45 countries, including the Netherlands, and has about three thousand members. The rapid growth was accompanied by problems. As early as the 1990s signals about power abuse and mismanagement in the recruitment and training of new members reached the Vatican. Rome tried from 1995 to gain better control over the community but with little success. In 2001 the religious family had to move its headquarters from Argentina to Italy and Buela was suspended in 2010 because of abuse allegations against him. He was also forbidden to have any contact with his two movements. After several supervisors sent by Rome encountered resistance from the religious family, in 2019 Cardinal Santos Abril y Castelló publicly complained about the “inner resistance” he faced as a supervisor, the Vatican launched in 2025 a package of extensive measures. The most notable was that the Blue Sisters were barred from accepting new members for three years. Sister Clara Echarte and Bishop José Antonio Satué Huerto were appointed as papal delegates.

This Spanish pair was given the task to help the fathers of the Word Made Flesh and the Blue Sisters make their communities healthy. They received extensive powers. Bishop Satué earlier this year established a new board in which three of the five members are not members of the Family of the Word Made Flesh. The ruling in the higher court on Buela is also being used by Rome to remind the communities of the need for change. The family must “rethink its charisma and purify its spirituality. In doing so, a distinction must be made between the gifts that the Holy Spirit offers for building up the Church, and the limitations and personal actions of the founder” of the family, the Vatican states. Cardinals receive full pay again: Pope Leo ends the coronavirus salary cut. 'The core of the seminary experience is learning to be with Jesus', no articles found. Leo XIV in Paris: 'Only God can fill the emptiness in the human heart', Pope Leo spoke to Europe in Metz, but did Europe listen?