Sicar Retreat: Sentimental Neo-Modernism Masquerading as Catholic Evangelization
The EWTN News portal (July 19, 2026) reports on the “Sicar” retreat movement, founded by one Mother María Elena Martínez under the aegis of her “Mary, Mother of Love” private association (erected 2015), which claims to be transforming thousands of young people across Latin America through an experience centered on the Samaritan woman at the well. The article, a translated adaptation from ACI Prensa, details the founder’s spiritual itinerary—from Missionaries of Charity to cloistered life to founding her own community—and the movement’s expansion through Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, Paraguay, and Peru. Testimonials emphasize “encounter,” “mercy,” “community,” and a “living Jesus,” wholly devoid of doctrinal content, sacramental theology, or the social Kingship of Christ. This report exposes not a revival of the faith, but the quintessential conciliar “new movement”: a Pelagian, immanentist, emotionally manipulative enterprise that substitutes the opus Dei for the opus hominis, confirming the total bankruptcy of the “new evangelization.”