The Neocatechumenal Way

Bishop Senior Visits the St. Francis of Assisi Community

According to neocatechumenaleiter.org, the Neocatechumenal Way (The Way) was founded by Francisco José Gómez Argüello (Kiko), Carmen Hernandez, and Father Mario Pezzi in the poorest towns near Madrid, Spain. Kiko’s artistic sensibilities and experience as a catechist in the Cursillos de Cristiandad, combined with Carmen’s theological training and knowledge of the Paschal Mystery, led the two to form the first Neocatechumenal Way community based on the Word of God, Liturgy, and Community.

Today, The Way is at the service of bishops and pastors to help encourage the faithful to a rediscovery of their baptism and enkindle a deeper understanding and application of their faith in small parish communities comprised of different ages and social groups. Bishop Timothy Senior welcomed a team of Neocatechumenal Way missionaries to the Diocese of Harrisburg last year and the fruit of the catechesis has begun to grow in a small community in Harrisburg.

Handing of the Bibles

On Thursday evening, May 28, Bishop Senior spent time in prayer and reflection with The Way community at St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Harrisburg. The evening centered around the Word of God and was enriched with beautiful song. As the community was praying together, they were given the opportunity to share an “echo” after the Gospel reading and before Bishop’s reflection.

When the time came for Bishop Senior to share his words with the community he said, “Whenever I hear those echoes, and then I am asked to preach; I always feel like God has already spoken.” The echoes from the community spoke of the pressures and hardships that the community was experiencing, but they also were experiencing the steadfast and true love of God. The faith The Way community has in God’s providence was heard in all the echoes.

Bishop told all those assembled, “God is revealing who He is for us and who He desires to be for each one of us in a deeply personal way.” Those words were a balm to many in the assembly and an affirmation of their echoes.

Bishop Senior spoke of a passionate and jealous God who desires us, who wants to be with us. How does God share himself with us? Bishop Senior said, “[God] shares His Word with us because it is who He is.”

Bishop’s words were that much more poignant as he, the representative of the Church, performed the rite of Handing of the Bibles to members of the community. “We want to hold on and treasure this Word,” the bishop said, and that is just what the people are attempting to do in The Way community at St. Francis of Assisi Parish.

Start of a Community

During his tenure as rector of Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Bishop Senior was acquainted with Redemptoris Mater Seminary, Philadelphia. The Redemptoris Mater Seminary, Diocese of Armagh’s website explains that Kiko and Carmen felt the need to respond to the call for the New Evangelization with preparing young men with a vocation to the priesthood. Redemptoris Mater Seminaries combine training for the priesthood with the statutes of the Neocatechumenal Way. Seminarians from Redemptoris Mater Seminaries are serving the Diocese of Harrisburg as part of the team of missionaries at St. Francis of Assisi Parish’s Neocatechumenal Way community.

After Bishop Senior’s installation in June of 2023, Ed and Margaret Condon, missionaries with The Way team, approached Bishop Senior about starting a community in the Diocese of Harrisburg. Bishop Senior proposed the possibility of inviting The Way into the Diocese, and Father Anthony Dill, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish, allowed the missionaries to share an eight-week catechesis in the basement of the parish’s soup kitchen in 2025. The catechesis was powerful and inspired the first community to form.

Ed Condon explained, “The eight-week catechesis is a series of talks that we give in the parish to open the ear of anyone who wants to receive catechism on what it means to be baptized as an adult Christian.” He says The Way is not for everyone. “But what The Way is, is a way for someone who has either doubted or lost their faith and somehow gotten sidetracked from their relationship with Christ to reestablish that and to also reestablish the relationships they have in their community, whatever that means,” Ed explained.

The Holy Spirit, working through Kiko and Carmen, has inspired the Neocatechumenal Way to expand to 1,392 dioceses and 6,197 parishes and growing. The Diocese of Harrisburg is now included in the work Kiko and Carmen started in 1960s Spain.

The decree of approval and final statutes for the Neocatechumenal Way was delivered to Kiko and Carmen by the President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, in June of 2008.

(Photos by Laura Loose, The Catholic Witness.)

By Laura Loose, The Catholic Witness