Vatican City, Jun 13, 2008 / 08:39 am
This morning, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, delivered the decree of approval and a final draft of the statues to initiators of the Neo-Catechumenal Way.
Upon receiving the decree, founders Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez, as well as Italian priest, Fr. Mario Pezzi, expressed their gratitude to Pope Benedict “who with great love has followed and approved the conclusion of this work."
They continued in a statement: "Following the approval of the statutes, and faced with the great challenges the Church must confront, we are happy to be able to offer ourselves to the Holy Father and the bishops for the new evangelization and the transmission of the faith to the new generations."
Since its founding, the Neo-Catechumenal Way has been supported by all Popes from Paul VI to Benedict XVI. In 1990, John Paul II recognized the Way as "valid for modern society and times," and expressed the hope that bishops and priests "appreciate and assist this work for the new evangelization, so that it may achieve its ends, following the guidelines suggested by the founders, in a spirit of service towards the local ordinary and in communion with him, and in a context of unity with the particular Church and with the Universal Church."
The Neo-Catechumenal Way, which began in Spain in 1964 has now spread to more than 100 countries world-wide, including some mission territories. In the wake of the renewal brought about by Vatican Council II, the Way places itself at the service of diocesan bishops and parish priests as a means of rediscovering the sacrament of Baptism and of a permanent education in the faith, offered to those faithful who wish to revive in their lives the richness of Christian initiation, by following this itinerary of catechesis and conversion.