The Neocatechumenal Way celebrates 50 years of presence in the United States and will celebrate it with a youth pilgrimage and a special Mass in Brooklyn, New York, the place where the initiators of this apostolate, the Spaniards Kiko Argüello and Carmen Hernández, arrived in 1974.
A pilgrimage of young people of the Neocatechumenal Way
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In a statement released this July 3, it is reported that, in preparation for this anniversary, the young people of the communities of the Neocatechumenal Way are carrying out a week of pilgrimage.
These days, these young people visit “shrines and holy places while reading the lives of America’s saints and martyrs.”
The Mass in Brooklyn
The pilgrimage will conclude on Sunday, July 7 in Brooklyn, specifically at the Barclays Center, where the Eucharist will be celebrated from 3:00 p.m. (local time).
Thousands of people are expected to participate in this Mass, which will be presided over by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, accompanied by other cardinals and bishops, such as Mons. Robert Brennan, Bishop of Brooklyn.
The visit of Kiko Argüello and Carmen Hernández in 1974
On April 28, 1974, Argüello and Hernández arrived in New York, invited by Bishop James Donegan, then head of liturgy for the Diocese of Brooklyn and parish priest of St. Joan of Arc parish in Jackson Heights, Queens.
On that occasion, the initiators of the Neocatechumenal Way visited several priests from New York and Brooklyn, with whom they discussed this important apostolate.
Father Vincent Resta, pastor of St. Columba Parish in Chelsea, Manhattan, was the first priest who decided to begin the Neocatechumenal Way in his parish, followed later by Bishop Donegan.
The Neocatechumenal Way in the United States
In the United States there are currently 1,100 communities, in addition to “hundreds of families on mission who left everything to announce the Gospel,” indicates the Neocatechumenal Way statement.
There are also 9 diocesan seminaries in the country. mother of The Redeemerwhere 300 seminarians are now preparing for the priesthood and a total of 270 priests have already been trained.
Seminars are in Newark, Washington DC, Boston, Denver, Dallas, Brooklyn, Bridgeport CT, Miami and Philadelphia.
What is the Neocatechumenal Way?
The Neocatechumenal Way, the statement recalls, was “officially approved by the Holy See in 2008, not as an association or movement, but as a post-baptismal catechumenate, as an instrument to help parishes and dioceses in the work of evangelization.”
The note specifies that “this instrument is offered to parish priests who see the need to introduce Christian initiation for adults in their parishes.”
The Neocatechumenal Way is present in 135 countries with some 25,000 communities, made up of more than one million members in total.
Walter Sanchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.