WHAT IS THE NEOCATECHUMENAL WAY?
 The first Neocatechumenal Way (the Way) community was founded in 1964 by Francisco “Kiko” Arguello and Carmen Hernandez in Madrid, Spain as a way to evangelize and re- awaken people’s baptismal promises. In 2008, the Holy See approved the Way’s final statutes, now active in 134 nations with 21,300 communities in 6,270 parishes, with 125 diocesan missionary Redemptoris Mater seminaries. Also in 2008, the Way came to St. Gabriel the Archangel Parish. In addition to the renewal of Baptism in individuals in a community, the Way emphasizes vocations to the priesthood and religious life as well as evangelization around the world by both priests and laypeople. The nature of the Way is defined by His Holiness John Paul II when he writes: "I recognize the Neocatechumenal Way as an itinerary of Catholic Formation, valid for our society and for our times." It is not a movement or an association, but an instrument in the parish at the service of the bishop to return to faith many of those who abandoned it. In 1974, Pope Paul VI declared that this "Way" after baptism would "renew in today's Christian communities those effects of maturity and deepening that, in the primitive Church, were realized by the period of preparation for baptism." Twenty-five years later, Pope John Paul II officially recognized the Way as "an itinerary of Catholic formation, valid for our society and for our times" and encouraged bishops and priests in the Church to "value and support this work for the new evangelization." Again in 1994, Pope John Paul II praised the Way for showing that "the small community, sustained by the Word of God and by the dominical Eucharist, becomes a place of communion, where the family recovers the sense and the joy of its fundamental mission to transmit both natural and supernatural life."