New evangelization program aims to awaken dormant faith

ACI Prensa Staff, Apr 9, 2025 / 10:53 am (CNA).

The Kerygma Center for the New Evangelization offers a program that, since its founding in 2013, has brought closer to God thousands of nonbelievers, especially baptized persons who had been living far from their faith.

Founded in response to the call of St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis, the center proposes a “re-evangelization” aimed particularly at those who, despite having faith, have not experienced “a living and personal encounter with Jesus Christ,” Kerygma president Carlos Macías de Lara explained to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.

Originally from Mexico, Macías is a full-time evangelist living in Italy and has more than 30 years of experience spreading the good news.

Despite having grown up in a Catholic family, during his youth he strayed from the faith and fell into the world of drugs, disordered sexuality, and alcohol. However, in 1992 he had a personal encounter with Jesus that, in his own words, “changed my life.”

It was then that he began to take his first steps in the new evangelization with the Evangelization 2000 group and later underwent formation at the San Andrés School of Evangelization in Guadalajara, Mexico, until he founded the Kerygma Center in 2013.

Macías also studied theology at the Catholic Biblical Institute for the Laity in Guadalajara, where he deepened his faith formation.

“We propose a series of projects through catechesis aimed at young people, adults, and families,” he explained.

The courses are based on the proclamation of the Gospel (kerygma) through biblical and spiritual formation. Macías emphasized that “the Kerygma Center is not a structure or a building but an evangelization program.”

The program, he explains, is introduced in communities and parishes that request it. “We send evangelizers to teach these courses when the parish or community asks us for them. Each course includes a manual so that it can be introduced and experienced in the community itself without the need for us to be constantly present.”

Currently, the team of about 40, including laypeople and priests, is organizing to meet requests coming from numerous communities in Europe, America, Australia, and Asia. “Our Ukrainian team member, for example, is replicating the courses in Ukraine, despite the painful wartime situation,” Macías added.

“In all our courses, we strive to help people live and experience an encounter with Jesus Christ, regardless of the path they’ve been on or the formation they may have, inviting them to share it in their families, at work, and in all their situations,” he explained.

Macías expressed gratitude for the growth the center has experienced over the years, although he lamented the rejection they encounter, especially in Europe, “where there is to all appearances a strong Christian presence.”

For this reason, he insisted that “the urgent need is to evangelize, helping the brothers and sisters who are serving and working within the Church to grow so they can reach out to others beyond the confines of the Church as well as the baptized who have not deepened their faith.”

Re-evangelizing the baptized

For Macías, this is the “great challenge”: re-evangelizing the laity and searching for committed Catholics who desire to evangelize beyond their borders.

The Kerygma Center advises priests who request its help to begin by offering a course to those who are part of the parish community, especially catechists and the faithful most involved with the reality they face in the parish.

Through the various courses, through which the word of God is brought into everyday life, parish members are invited “in a very simple way to get the Gospel message out there to the existential peripheries, as Pope Francis invites us.”

Therefore, according to Macías, it’s about providing formation to the faithful so that they themselves can evangelize and fulfill the mission of spreading the Gospel. These formation sessions, according to Macías, “are like a shot in the arm that strengthen the community.”

As part of the Jubilee of Hope, approximately 170 members of the faithful will travel to Italy July 3–6 to hold their international seminar at San Lorenzo College of Brindisi in Rome.

At this year’s conference they will meditate on four chapters from the Book of Ruth. “Our goal is, as the Catholic Church and Pope Francis invite us, to be pilgrims of hope as evangelizers, to help all those living in desperate situations, whether it’s financial, social, or due to the wars that are taking place around the world.”

The seminar will culminate with a pilgrimage to Rome to pass through the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica, where they will participate in a Mass celebrated by the archpriest of the basilica, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/263251/new-evangelization-method-aims-to-awaken-dormant-faith