Kiko Argüello

Francisco José Gómez de Argüello y Wirtz (born January 9, 1939) is a Spanish artist and, together with Carmen Hernández and Father Mario Pezzi, founder of the Neocatechumenal Way.

Argüello was born in León, he studied fine arts at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, and in 1959 was awarded a Special National Prize for Painting. In 1964 he began the Neocatechumenal Way in the slum of Palomeras Altas in Madrid.

At the Royal Academy Argüello went through a profound existential crisis, of which he gave a vivid account in an interview. He wondered how it was possible "that we live in a world full of injustices when inside we have a desire for justice." Through his involvement with a theatre group, he "learned something of the philosophy of Sartre, (No Exit, The Flies, etc.), and in the end Sartre gives us an answer: that the world is absurd, everything is absurd, that we have a craving for justice and live in an unjust world because everything is absurd." Argüello tried to live "consciously, existentially" the "reality" of Sartrian atheism. He dedicated himself to art, won a National Prize, and appeared on television, but to his surprise "it meant absolutely nothing" to him. "In the end I asked myself: but people, how can they live if I can't?... I'd get up and say: to live, for what? To paint. And why paint? To make money. What for, if nothing satisfies me? I knew that sooner or later I'd shoot myself, I'd kill myself."

At the height of this crisis, however, Argüello read another philosopher, Bergson, "who says that intuition is a... way..., deeper than reason itself, of arriving at truth. And, surprised, I found that, deep inside, my artist's intuition did not accept the absurdity of existence; I was aware of the beauty of a tree, of the beauty of things; there is something there that can't be absurd. Then if the absurd is not the truth, if there is a reason for being... the next step was: then somebody created us.... At that moment... something in me told me that God existed,... that God loved me,... that I was a son of God. And with great surprise I found... that this God that appeared in my heart, in my deepest soul, was Jesus Christ, the Jesus Christ of the Catholic Church."

Summing up this period of his life during his meeting with Pope John Paul II in Rome on November 2, 1980, Argüello said, "God permitted me to experience the absurd – atheism – until He had mercy." After his conversion he determined to dedicate his life to Jesus and to the Church. He began to frequent catechism courses and for years he trained as a Catechist with the Cursillos movement. Convinced that Jesus is present in the suffering of the poorest of people and inspired by the example of Charles de Foucauld, Argüello abandoned his studies and career as a painter. Taking only his guitar, crucifix, and Bible, he left to live amongst the poor in a wooden shack in Palomeras Altas, a slum on the outskirts of Madrid.

It was among the poor of Palomeras that Kiko encountered Carmen Hernández, a graduate in chemistry and theology, through her sister who was rescuing homosexuals & prostitutes. Thanks to the liturgist Priest Farnés Schrerer, they got in touch with the liturgical renewal of the Second Vatican Council and the centrality of the Easter Vigil.^{[citation needed]}

After more than thirty years of work in more than a hundred countries, this Neocatechumenate was recognized by Pope John Paul II as an "effective means of Catholic formation for society and the present time." Kiko Argüello, Maria Ascension and the Italian Priest Mario Pezzi are presently the international team responsible for the Neocatechumenal Way worldwide. Its statutes were approved ad experimentum for a period of five years in June 2002. The Statutes, with minimal changes, were given final approval by the Church on June 13, 2008. Today the Neocatechumenal Way is present in more than 110 countries in all the six continents, in nearly 900 dioceses, and in around 8,000 parishes with more than 30,000 communities, 19,000 of which are found in Europe, 10,000 being in Italy.

Fruits of the Neocatechumenal Way were recognized by various Catholic universities and institutes through conferring of honorary degrees on Kiko Argüello. On May 13, 2009, he was invested with an honorary degree by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. The institute underlined "the strong commitment of the Neocatechumenal Way on family issues" by its emphasis on "the experience of the 'domestic celebration' with which it sends families on a mission." It also pointed out the value of the lay group's "promotion, together with other ecclesiastical organizations, of major initiatives in support of the family," especially the "Family Day in Italy and the 2007 Feast of the Holy Family in Madrid."