Neocatechumenal Way - Leadership and Governance

Leadership and Governance

The Neocatechumenate is led by the "International Responsible Team of the Way": Argüello, Hernández, and Fr. Mario Pezzi, a priest of the Diocese of Rome. Under the terms of the 2007 statute, the three members of this leadership team will remain in place for life, after which an electoral college of senior neocatechumenal catechists will elect a new team which, with the approval of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, will have a mandate to lead the Way for a period of seven years until new elections are held.

Leadership at national and regional levels rests in approximately seven hundred teams of "itinerant catechists," comprising a priest and two or three laymen, appointed and supervised by the International Responsible Team. Depending on the number of communities in a particular area, a team of Itinerant Catechists may be responsible for the implementation of the NC Way in a country, a group of countries or a region of a country. Pope John Paul II summarized the role of the itinerant catechists in December 1985:

"They contribute by forming the first neocatechumenal communities of a parish, and are supposed to maintain regular contact with the Bishops of the diocese in which they work; the itinerant teams preserve a constant link with the responsibles of the Neocatechumenal Way, visiting periodically the communities they catechized and taking care of the development of the Neocatechumenal Way in the territory assigned to them, being fully faithful to the charism given to the initiators and obedient to the local Ordinary."

The itinerant catechists do not make any formal commitment to their missionary role, and are free to resign at any time.

In June 2008 the Statutes of the Neocatechumenal Way received final approval from the Vatican.