The Institute of the Incarnate Word was founded in San Rafael, Argentina on March 25, 1984, by Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela. From the very 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 charism 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 the 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—i.e., 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, in 1988 Fr. Buela also founded a female branch to the order, called the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará (SSVM)[1]—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.
The IVE quickly expanded to other countries, and the first priests of the IVE came to the U.S. in December of 1989—the sisters came a few years later. Several years later, given its growth, the IVE officially established the Province of the Immaculate Conception, which consists of our English-speaking presence in the New World—that is, the U.S., Canada, and Guyana (a very small English-speaking country in South America where we have several missions). We began our novitiate here in the U.S. (St. Isaac Jogues & Companion Martyrs Novitiate) in 1998, our seminary (the Fulton Sheen House of Formation) in 1999, and we started a high-school seminary (Bl. Jose Sanchez del Rio High School Seminary) in 2008. In that same year (2008) in Guyana, we also started a residence for boys who aspire to the priesthood. In this province, we currently have 40 priests and about 75 young men in formation.
[1] Both the IVE and the SSVM also have a contemplative branch (i.e., monks/nuns), and we also have a Third Order composed of lay people—married, single, and consecrated.
For a detailed map of the IVE Missions in our Province:
http://iveamerica.org/index.php/ive-about/our-province/provincial-map.