Carmen Hernández, co-founder of the Neocatechumenal Way, has this week, Tuesday 19 July, died at her home in Madrid, Spain. She was 85 years old.
Ms Hernández, along with Kiko Arguello and Father Mario Pezzi, made up the international team responsible for the ecclesial reality – which focuses on post-baptismal adult formation. It is estimated that the NCW contains about one million members in some 40,000 parish-based communities around the world.
The responsible of the Neocatechumenal Way in Australia, Totò Piccolo, recently stated that Ms Hernández had a great love for the mission of the NCW in Australia. She was also a friend of Pope John Paul II and would speak her mind to him on matters of the Church.
“And Pope John Paul would listen. He had a great love for Carmen,” Mr Piccolo said.
As a young woman, Ms Hernández was encouraged by her father to pursue a career in science, and managed to obtain her licenciatura (a first level degree) in chemistry. Her desire to become a missionary, however, was also evident in her teenage years when she retreated in Barcelona’s Istituto Misioneras de Cristo Jesús for eight years.
As the winds of youth and student revolution swept through Spain, Hernández strived to create a missionary team for Bolivia. She accomplished this and was able to help a team to go and announce the Good News to the Indios.
Ms Hernández, however, remained in Spain and dedicated more of her time to theological studies. It was during this time that she met Kiko Arguello, a young painter who had also renounced a prominent career to announce Jesus Christ to the poor of the Palomeras Altas, a peripheral area of Madrid.
Following Kiko Arguello, Ms Hernández moved to the area and gradually discovered that the Church was made of the poor and weak because, in them, Christ was made present.
In the shanty towns, Arguello and Hernández created the first communities of people who lived their lives in humility, simplicity and praise, where Christ could be discovered in the other. This reality was brought to Rome, where the first communities of what was later called the Neocatechumenal Way appeared in the Borghetto Latino and then in parishes throughout the world.
Ms Hernández’s theological knowledge also significantly contributed to the creation of a number of catechesis which were officially approved by the Holy See in 2008.
Over the last year and a half, Ms Hernández had suffered deteriorating health, although she was never diagnosed with a specific disease.
She was last seen publicly on 18 March at an audience that Pope Francis granted missionary families of the Neocatechumenal Way.
The Holy Father also spoke to her by phone on 1 July during an audience with Kiko Argüello and Fr Pezzi.
In an interview with Vatican Radio July 20, Mr Arguello said Ms Hernandez was an important role model for many young women. “They said it was thanks to Carmen they found pride in being a woman,” he said.
“She always talked about the importance of women in the church” and how they figured prominently in the Bible, he said. She would personally ask young women to consider monastic life, he said, adding that more than 4,000 young women from the Neocatechumenal Way are now cloistered nuns.
Her funeral Mass is to be held Thursday 21 July in Madrid’s cathedral, celebrated by Archbishop Carlos Osoro Sierra.
Courtesy Catholic News Agency, Zenit and Catholic News Service