Testimony of Kiko Argüello. Pentecost 2025

My name is Kiko Argüello and together with the servant of God, Carmen Hernández, we are the initiators of the Neocatechumenal Way, a diocesan form of Christian initiation which, through catechesis, the Word of God, and the sacraments lived in community, leads people to an adult faith and fraternal communion.

I am a Spanish painter. During my university years, after an existential crisis, I had a serious encounter with the Lord, who called me to leave everything behind and go live among the poor. God then granted me the opportunity to put my art at the service of the new aesthetic in the Church. I went to live in the slums on the outskirts of Madrid, following in the footsteps of Saint Charles de Foucauld: living the hidden life of Christ, living like the Holy Family of Nazareth.

Carmen Hernández, a chemist and theologian who was looking for a group to go on a mission to South America, met the poor people who gathered in my shack and was so surprised that she decided to stay and live in a shack near ours. In the shacks, we saw how the Holy Spirit created communion between gypsies and people who were deeply broken. We have seen the gratuitous love of God manifested in Jesus Christ for the salvation of man, to bring him out of anguish and sin. This presence of God in the midst of the poor has been prepared by the Holy Spirit for his Church. In the midst of the poor, we have discovered a unique theological-catechetical synthesis that will be the basis of the Neocatechumenal Way.

It is a path that God has given to his Church, after the Council, to open up within parishes a journey of Christian initiation, similar to that of the early Church, in stages, where contemporary man can be born to the new life that the risen Christ has brought with his coming. This journey of Christian formation is lived in small communities, mirroring the Holy Family of Nazareth, so that the seed we received at Baptism can reach its full maturity.

Thinking about this Pentecost Vigil, I asked myself several questions: How can we reach atheists today who no longer have faith? What does it mean to be Christian? What does it mean to love? The Gospel reminds us: “Love one another as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples“ (cf. Jn 13:34). ”… If you are perfectly one, the world will believe” (cf. Jn 17:21), this secularized man will believe. It is therefore a question of loving in this dimension: in the dimension of love for one’s enemy. Christ allowed himself to be killed for us and for us, his enemies: love for one’s enemy. To arrive at this love, at an adult stature of faith, we have discovered that it is necessary to begin a journey of Christian initiation in a community.

I painted a small icon of the Virgin Mary because this Way was inspired by the Blessed Virgin Mary. The original is in a chapel in the cathedral of Madrid. On this icon is the phrase: “We must build Christian communities like the Holy Family of Nazareth, living in humility, simplicity, and praise: the other is Christ.” We must build communities where Christians can become adults, to fulfill a mission in the midst of a secularized world and to form a community as the Body of the risen Christ, where the other is Christ.

The Way, as a Christian initiation, forms Christian communities in parishes, made up of families, young people, the elderly, people close to and distant from the Church. It participates with the dioceses in the Jubilee event in its various expressions, convinced that this year is a privileged moment for a serious encounter with Jesus Christ who gives us and the world today the hope it so badly needs.

The Neocatechumenal Way has been raised up by the Holy Spirit, as all the Popes have confirmed, to help the Church in the evangelization of the Third Millennium. We are very grateful to the Lord and to the Virgin Mary, who willed the birth of this Way, for the election of the new Pope, Leo XIV. The support of the Popes has always been fundamental in the development of the Way.

There are so many young people on the Way, and undoubtedly the most eagerly awaited Jubilee is that of young people, at the beginning of August. Thousands of young people will arrive in Rome accompanied by their catechists and bishops. After meeting the Pope, they will have a vocational meeting with us to receive help in discerning their vocation. We are sure that the words of Pope Leo XIV in his exhortation during the “Regina Caeli” on Vocations Day: “Do not be afraid,” will bear much fruit.

Kiko Argüello – Vigil of Pentecost 2025