3.The Neocatechumenal Way as fruit of the Second Vatican Council

While Wojtyla and the Council, and then the Magisterium, were rediscovering the centrality of the catechumenate in the process of evangelization for the non-baptized, and, in a certain way, also of the baptized, in a shanty town in the periphery of Madrid, a concrete experience of a post-baptismal catechumenate was developing, thanks to the encounter between Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez.

Kiko Arguello, a Spanish artist, after an existential crisis and conversion, had discovered
in the suffering of the innocent the mystery of Christ crucified, present in the last ones of the world: this led him to leave everything and, following in the footsteps of Charles de Foucauld, to go and live among the poor in the slum of "Palomeras Altas", on the outskirts of Madrid.

Carmen Hernandez, Spanish, graduate in chemistry, had been in contact with the renewal of the Second Vatican Council through Mons. P. Farnes Scherer (a liturgist). She, too, went to live in the slums of "Palomeras Altas", where she wanted to form a group to go and evangelize the miners of Oruro (Bolivia), and where she met Kiko Arguello.

The artistic temperament of Kiko, his existential experience, his formation as a catechist of the "Cursillos de Christianidad", the evangelizing zeal of Carmen – formed in the Institute "Misioneras de Cristo Jesus" - her theological preparation (licensed in Theology), and her knowledge of the Paschal Mystery and the liturgical renewal of the Council; and this environment of the very poor, constituted the "humus", the "laboratory", which gave rise to a kerygmatic theological-catechetical synthesis that became the backbone of this process of evangelization for adults, the Neocatechumenal Way.

As a result of their collaboration, there began to take shape an itinerary of formation of a catechumenal type.

This rediscovery in concrete form of doing a post-baptismal catechumenate came to the attention of the hierarchy first through the Archbishop of Madrid, Mons. Casimiro Morcillo, who, when he came to the shanty towns, discerned the action of the Holy Spirit and blessed it, seeing in it the fulfillment of the Council in which he had participated as one of the general secretaries.

Then, in 1972, the Neocatechumenate was studied in depth by the Congregation for Divine Worship, which was in the process of publishing the RCIA.

The then secretary of the Congregation, Mons. Annibale Bugnini, and the group of experts with him, were impressed seeing that what they had been elaborating for years on the subject of the catechumenate for adults, was already being put into practice by the Holy Spirit, starting with the poor. After two years of study on the liturgical-catechetical praxis of the Neocatechumenal Way, they published in Notitiae, the official journal of the Congregation, a note of praise for the work which the Neocatechumenal Way was doing in the parishes, recognizing in the Way a gift of the Holy Spirit for implementing the Council.

Together with the Congregation, the name was agreed: "Neocatechumenate", or Neocatechumenal Way.
In 1974, ten years after the birth of the Way, Pope Paul VI received in audience Kiko, Carmen and Father Mario together with the Pastors and catechists gathered in Rome, and, in the face of some accusations which raised suspicions of Anabaptism, or of repeating it, the Pope responded with great strength and clarity:

"…To live and to promote this awakening is what you call a new form of ‘"after baptism’ which will be able to renew in today’s Christian communities those fruits of maturity and of deepening which in the early Church were achieved by the period of preparation before Baptism. You doing it afterwards before or after I would say is secondary. the fact is that you aim at the authenticity, at the fullness, at the coherence, at the sincerity, of Christian life. And this is a very great merit, I repeat, which consoles us enormously… "

4.The Meeting of John Paul II with Kiko and Carmen

On September 5, 1979, John Paul II, who had just been elected pope, met Kiko, Carmen and Father Mario personally for the first time, and invited them to the Mass celebrated by him in Castel Gandolfo:
The meeting with Kiko and Carmen represented for the Pope more than anything else a concrete answer to his intuition about the centrality of the catechumenate for the new evangelization. After the Mass, he said to them that during the celebration, thinking of them, he had seen Atheism-Baptism-Catechumenate, thus expressing his conviction that, in the face of atheism, baptism needed to be rediscovered through a catechumenate.

On November 2, 1980, the first public meeting took place between Kiko, Carmen and Father Mario, in the parish of Canadian Martyrs in Rome, which twelve years before had been the first parish in which the Way opened. Speaking to the Neocatechumenal communities, the Pope said:

"We are living in a period of radical confrontation which imposes itself everywhere… faith and anti-faith, Gospel and anti-gospel, Church and anti-church, God and anti-god, … an anti-god cannot exist, but in man there can be created the radical denial of God… in this our age we need to re-discover a radical faith, radically understood, radically lived and radically fulfilled… I hope that your experience was born in such a perspective and can lead towards a healthy radicalization of our Christianity, of our faith, towards an authentic evangelical radicalism."

On January 31,

On 31st January 1988, while meeting the Neocatechumenal communities of the parish of Santa Maria Goretti, John Paul II stated with even greater precision the importance of the Neocatechumenate for the Church:

"Through your way and your experiences you can see what a treasure the catechumenate as a method of preparation for Baptism was for the early Church. When we study Baptism, … we see more clearly that today’s practice has become always more inadequate, superficial… without a pre-baptismal catechumenate, this practice is not sufficient, it is inadequate for the great mystery of faith and of the love of God which is the sacrament of Baptism.

I see here the genesis of the Neocatechumenate someone – I don’t know if it was Kiko or someone else – has questioned himself: where did the strength of the early church come from? And where comes the weakness of the Church today which has much bigger numbers? And I believe that he has found the answer in the catechumenate, in this way…

… There is a way, I think, to rebuild the parish on the experience of the neocatechuemanl way."
Here we do not wish to go through all the historical stages which have led to the approval of the Statutes, which may be read in the Historical Note and Juridical Note: in particular, the Letter Ogniqualvolta with which on August 30, 1990, the Holy Father officially recognized the way as an itinerary of Catholic formation.

It is necessary only to stress here the approval of the statutes as the fulfillment of a long process which has led the Magisterium of the Church to see more and more the need to re-evangelize the baptized and to recognize the Neocatechumenal Way as an instrument suited to this end. Up to now, however, a type of ordo or schema which could offer itself as a way of putting a post-baptismal catechumenate into practice has been lacking.

This is what the Holy See has done with this decision: it has approved and offered an ordo, a schema of a post-baptismal catechumenal itinerary, composed, however, not only of liturgical stages, but also integrated with a catechetical content which in more than thirty years has produced numerous fruits.
The recognition of the Neocatechumenal way is thus one of the concrete realisations of the intentions of the Magisterium and, in particular, the fulfillment of one of the most urgent needs felt by John Paul II.