Institute of the Incarnate Word

St. Augustine of Canterbury Church is conducted by the Priests of the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE) with the support of their female branch, the sisters Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara (SSVM) - a religious family who have taken the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and slavery to Mary.

The Institute of the Incarnate Word was founded in San Rafael, Argentina on March 25, 1984 by Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela. From the beginning, it formed its own seminarians (this is something absolutely integral to our charism), and it has also - by the grace of God - been blessed with many vocations. The goal of the Religious Family of the Incarnate Word is explicitly the inculturation of the Gospel - to evangelize all cultures in order to bring Christ to the entirety of man and to all of mankind. Thus we desire to adopt everything good and beautiful in a culture (and get rid of the rest) so that it can be better conformed to Christ. We desire to do this in utter conformity with the teaching of the Church, and we want always to cultivate a genuine missionary spirit. We don't see ourselves as social workers, but as missionaries, and we want to win souls for Christ.

Given the interest that was shown by a number of women in also living our charism, Fr. Buela also founded a female branch to the order, called the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara (SSVM) in 1988. We have the same charism and identical constitutions, but we are canonically independent of each other, as is required by Canon Law.

The IVE became a religious congregation of diocesan right in 2004 (Diocese of Velletri-Segni, Italy). Currently, the IVE has about 900 members (priests, brothers, seminarians and minor seminarians) and the SSVM has about 1,000.

For more information, please visit: www.iveamerica.org.