Fr. Edwin “Pius” Sammut O.C.D., lead catechist of the Neocatechumenal Way for Micronesia and Hawaii, has been secretly recorded speaking of the “persecution” that the Neocatechumenal Way has suffered in Guam over the last year:

“We don’t know what the Lord has prepared for us. Really. When I look back I see its…how true this is it…okay, because we never expected, for example, when we were doing the convivence last year, we, we didn’t know that the Lord had foreseen for us a fantastic moment of, of a storm, you know. God put us in a storm. You know, with winds, battling against the winds and the waves. I’m referring to the persecution which fell on us. God, you know, but, but God knows what’s going to happen this year.”

For the record, no persecution “fell” on the Neocatechumenal Way  (NCW) in Guam over the last year.  They operate in a completely unconstrained way in the Archdiocese of Agana, and their leaders have unfettered access to and control over all ecclesiastical authority in Guam.  They deign who is ordained, which pastor is assigned to which parish,  and which non-NCW priest gets axed.

No, they have not been persecuted, but rather, their leaders have been criticized on the internet, and in the press, for actions that they have taken which have devastated the local Church.   Those actions, for the most part, are amply documented here, and here, for example.

Fr. Sammut has worked hard over the last 18 years to develop this sectarian persecution complex among the members of the NCW on Guam, and it seems to have worked very effectively for him.

He must be stopped.