In the meeting with Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Basilica on January 10, 2009, for the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the birth of the first neocatechumenal community in Rome, the first 15 communities were sent by the Holy Father to the periferies of Rome.
These communities were willing to leave their parish – where they had already finished the neocatechumenal itinerary – to go in mission to difficult areas of the periphery at the invitation of the parish priests, degraded areas with a lot of violence, drugs, destroyed families, newly arrived immigrants.
Kiko, presenting this new mission, noted that “the Way ends by announcing the Gospel throughout the world”. “One of the biggest novelties is that the whole community goes on mission. Not that just some brothers go, but the whole community. It is a great grace and something wonderful that God sends you on this mission. It is great to be able to leave, that the Lord gives you a mission; die in the mission, grow old in the mission.”
Precisely, Pope Francis in his encyclical Evangelii Gaudium speaks of a Church “on the way out” and expresses the need to evangelize territorial and existential peripheries.
Also the diocese of Madrid, where the Way was born and is present in 45 parishes with 221 communities, speaks of this experience. In 2011, the then Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal Rouco Varela sent the first 10 communities on mission.
The current Archbishop of the capital of Spain, Cardinal Carlos Osoro Sierra, in a meeting on March 22, 2015, sent out 8 new communities. In Madrid, there is a total of 18 communitates in missionem.
On May 5, 2018, for the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the birth of the first community of the Way in Rome, in a great meeting in Tor Vergata, Pope Francis sent 25 communities in mission to various parishes in Rome to sustain and strengthen the Christian life of parish communities that were most deprived.
“Today, in this “go” of Jesus, there are present the ever new scenarios and challenges of the evangelizing mission of the Church, and we are all called to this new missionary “departure”. Every Christian and every community will discern which is the way the Lord asks, but we are all invited to accept this call: leave your own comfort and dare to reach all the peripheries that need the light of the Gospel.”