Your Holiness and very dear Fathers :
Humanity is passing from a rural to an urban mentality. We find ourselves in front of an epochal change.
Apparently, the Lord has already predicted what is happening, when Revelations presents the mighty prostitute, sitting on a beast, who intoxicates with the wine of her prostitutions all nations of the earth. And Revelations continues : "The woman you saw seated on a beast is the GREAT CITY" (Rev 17,18).
Here is the great city - multi-ethnic and pluri-religious - which is submerging man in secularism and anonymity, as recently the Pope underlined very well when he spoke to the Bishops of Ontario : man in the great city is characterized by an uprooting and anonymity which simmers in a "culture of iniquity" : alimentary frauds, mafias, political corruption, murders, raping of women and children, euthanasia, abortions, genetic manipulation, etc...
In the same speech, full of prophetic courage, the Pope said this to the Bishops : "We cannot permit the anonymity of the big city to penetrate in our Eucharistic gatherings", and he made the proposal to make of the parish a community of small communities.
Revelations continues : "Come out of Babylon, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven."
To come out of the big city means to enter into the heavenly Jerusalem : this is the work of the Church. How? By returning to the very first apostolic model, as the Pope specified in the VI Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe.
New Evangelization through the announcement of the kerygma made by itinerant apostles without purse or bag, that opens up, in dioceses and parishes, the baptismal pool, through a way of Christian initiation that helps humanity to get out of Babylon and become citizens of heaven.
Already many ecclesial events are happening.
Like the Neocatechumenal Way that opens in the parishes a Christian post-baptismal initiation, of the catechumenal genre, lived in small communities, that strengthens the faith of those who are near and calls to faith those who are far-away.
We have seen - in more than 30 years of experience and in more than 100 nations - the urgency that the structures of the Church be renewed. The parish which in front of the "global village" of McLuhan, should become a "celestial village" with a new esthetic : a catechumenium with modern spaces, for the worship and the life of small communities, a more human social model, able to open spaces for a new culture.
In this celestial village, creative as a new concept of parish, we have seen families rebuilt and thousands of vocations who have let Bishops erect 17 Diocesan Redemptoris Mater Seminaries in Europe and 40 in the whole world.
But I believe that this is not enough. In front of the danger of apostasy of Europe, in front of the calamity of sin against the light, we would like to make a real proposal, looking towards the great Jubilee of the year 2000.
We suggest that a Pontifical Commission is instituted for the realization of the New Evangelization, according to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, to promote the announcement of the kerygma and the Christian Initiation of adults.
This commission, in the name of Peter, can involve all the Church - dioceses, religious men and women, movements, new ecclesial realities etc - in preparing the missionaries of the Jubilee, who sent by Peter in the dioceses, can help the pastors to build up in the parishes the announcement of the kerygma, that calls to conversion and to establish ways of Christian initiation, where the riches of Baptism are discovered.
It is necessary that Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic Guzman, Saint Ignatius of Loyola trek again through the highways of Europe, announcing to men the tremendous news that death has been conquered by Christ for everyone, with the event of eternal life in the hearts of men.
The Neocatechumenal Way - recognized by the Holy Father as "an itinerary of Catholic Formation, valid for our society and for the times of today" and who is presenting the statutes to the Holy See as a Christian initiation, offered to the dioceses and parishes - puts itself to the service of the the Holy Father and of the prospective Pontifical Commission for the New Evangelization.