April 21, 2025
Kiko, Father Mario and Ascensión, the responsibles for the Neocatechumenal Way, and all the Brothers of the Way have received with sorrow the news of the death of the Holy Father, our Pope Francis.
Yesterday, in his Easter message Urbi et Orbi, he gave us his final witness of faith: “Dear brothers and sisters, at the Lord’s Easter, death and life have clashed in a prodigious duel, but the Lord lives forever and instills in us the certainty that we too are called to share in the life that knows no end, where the sound of weapons and the echoes of death will no longer be heard. Let us entrust ourselves to him, for only he can make all things new.”
We are grateful to the Lord for having given us a zealous pastor who brought the Gospel to the most distant spheres of the Church, giving himself to manifest God’s closeness and love to all, especially to the poorest and most abandoned in body and spirit. We gratefully cherish his testimony of total self-giving to bear witness to God’s love for every creature.
Since the beginning of his pontificate in 2013, the Way has felt supported and sustained by Pope Francis. In the various meetings we have had with him over the years, he has always shown us his fatherly closeness, and we have loved him. In particular, we are pleased to recall the sending of many Way families on mission to different continents and his words on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Neocatechumenal Way, on May 5, 2018: “Dear brothers and sisters, your charism is a great gift from God for the Church of our time. Let us thank the Lord for these fifty years…. I accompany you and encourage you: forward!”
We ask all the brothers of the Neocatechumenal Way to pray for the Holy Father. Let us pray to the Lord that he may welcome him into the peace of his Kingdom.
Christ is risen! Truly risen!
