About the Neo Catechumenal Way

What is the Neocatechumenal Way
Introduction by Kiko and Carmen

The Lord has called us to live a way of conversion, through which we are coming to discover the immense riches of our faith in a post-baptismal catechumenate. During this catechumenate, gradually, stage by stage, step by step, we are descending to the waters of eternal regeneration, so that the baptism the Church has conferred on us in the past, may by our adherence to it, become a sacrament of salvation, good news for all men. Through the Neocatechumenate, a way of Christian initiation that develops a pastoral work of evangelization for adults is opened up at the center of the parish, This evangelization is bringing to a living faith many of our brothers and sisters who today live a Christianity of habit, and is giving to many people submerged in a secularized world the possibility of meeting Our Lord Jesus Christ through Christian communities which live their faith at an adult level: of love in the dimension of the cross and perfect unity.

How the Neocatechumenal Communities came into being

To our astonishment, we witnessed a word which, taking flesh among these poor people who welcomed it with joy, brought to birth a community in prayer and a surprising liturgy as the response of all these brothers, laden with sins, who blessed the Lord for having remembered them. So, in the space of three years, we saw appearing before our eyes a tripod on which would be based the Way that the Lord was creating: the embryo of a Catechumenate, in a Church where fraternal communion was coming into being, in which love took on a dimension which surprised everyone: the dimension of the cross where one dies for the enemy.

How they spread

This love, made visible in a small community, was the sign which called to faith many people whose lives were far from the Church. The result was that the parish priests of St. Frontis in Zamora and of Christ the King in Madrid invited us to bring to their parishes the experience of the catechesis they had observed. To our surprise, even in these parishes where the social environment was quite different from that of the shanty town, we saw how communities on a way towards conversion were born after the announcement of the kerygma and two months of catechesis.
        When the Archbishop of Madrid at that time, the Most Rev. Mgr. Casimiro Morcillo, came into contact with this reality, he supported it enthusiastically, and he himself sent us to the parishes who wished to begin the experience, while urging us to act in union with the parish priest. This experience spread rapidly in Madrid and other Spanish dioceses.

In 1968, we were invited to come to Rome, bearing a letter from the Archbishop of Madrid for Cardinal Dell'Acqua, then Vicar or Rome, and we began the same catechesis in the parish of Canadian Martyrs. It then spread throughout the diocese, through the preaching of catechists elected by the first communities, and in many other countries, in all the continents, including the missionary countries.