As the Litany of the Saints reverberated down Rúa do Franco, I couldn’t have felt more self-conscious. It sounded like there was some latter-day Crusader army behind me due to the acoustic effect caused by the narrow alley’s granite walls magnifying the voices behind me. We were getting a lot of attention. Heads were turning, people were rushing out of shops and restaurants to watch, with mobile phones being whipped out to take photos and videos. There would be footage of me being a Catholic and professing my faith. It was deeply unsettling. What might my friends say.
When Fr Nicholas Leviseur had suggested the ancient prayer of invocations as a fitting way to mark our final approach to Santiago de Compostela Cathedral it had made sense. What better way, he explained, to crown our Camino pilgrimage and to bear witness to the Faith. Now I wasn’t so sure. I was at the very front of the procession due to my having a guiding hand on Aiden, our pilgrimage cantor, whose eyes and attention were glued on his mobile phone as he scrolled through and sang the names while our pilgrimage procession closed in on the resting place of Saint James the Apostle.
As I tried to keep my face down from those prying cyclops lenses pointing our way, I at least had the thought to console me that our group of 32 pilgrims had arrived safely after completing the 74-mile route from the fortress town of Valença that overlooks the Minho River forming the Portuguese-Spanish border. There was also the thought—if not consoling, then at least distracting—that in less than 48 hours I’d be doing the whole thing all over again! The next day, Fr Nicholas and I were taking a bus down to Porto to meet a group of seminarians in formation, and deacons and priests at various stages of their ministries. They were flying out to be put through their paces on an even longer 88-mile Camino starting in Rubiães, about 13 miles south of the border crossing at Valença. They also had to carry all their kit—which included for each of them a large and heavy Breviary for the saying of Lauds and Evening Prayer each day—unlike the laity who had the choice of a luggage transfer service.
The entire enterprise may have been a Camino first: back-to-back Caminos squeezed between May 25 and June 10, with 32 pilgrims on the first one—including two mini peregrinos under the age of 3 carried on shoulders and in a baby carrier—and 13 on the second one. Overseen and facilitated by the Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham, it took military-level planning to pull off. Both Fr Nicholas and I were in the British Army and went through Sandhurst. Pilgrimage D-Day was preceded by six months of constant organising between the two of us, while Fr Nicholas started the ball rolling a year ago following our paths crossing on a Catholic Herald pilgrimage for which he was the spiritual guide. He put a plan together of using money generated by the first fee-paying laity pilgrimage to help finance the seminarians’ pilgrimage.
(Two of the seminarians saying the Rosary during a climb up at hill)
Regarding the result, I won’t claim that everything went smoothly. Both of Fr Nicholas’s boots fell completely apart and only finished the second Camino thanks to lots of purple medical tape wrapped around them, bolstered by duct tape when it rained. One seminarian caught scabies. Despite these, and other curve balls that any Camino produces, I’m relatively confident that it may have been the best organised couplet of back-to-back Caminos in the 1,000-odd-year history that pilgrims have been tramping throughout Europe toward Santiago de Compostela.
That’s not a boast. It was simply what was required to produce the necessary result. Similarly, this is the sort of effort, dedication and demonstration needed if the Catholic Church is to have any chance against all the cynical secular forces arraigned against it. In his Catholic Herald podcast Facing the new authoritarianism, Gavin Ashenden discusses how a new era is opening up, in which essential and hard-won freedoms and civil liberties are increasingly under threat. As a result, argues Ryan Christopher, the director of ADF UK, a faith-based legal advocacy organisation defending fundamental freedoms and human dignity, Catholics must strive with greater urgency to become more involved in public life to protect and uphold so much of what they hold dear and, for now, take for granted.
This theme was embraced on both Caminos. Fr Nicholas emphasised that as Catholics we need to get out of our comfort zones, such as going to Mass in a familiar church surrounded by reassuring sights and smells, to engage with the grubby world while resolutely demonstrating our Faith. This, he said, is required by both the laity and the religious—and that’s how it played out on our two Caminos.
After the laity arrived in the town of O Porriño, Mass was celebrated by Monsignor Keith Newton, Ordinary of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, in front of an old stone cross in the middle of a plaza opposite our hotel. The noise from two bars on the edge of the plaza accompanied the swinging thurible, as did a dog that decided to relieve itself rather close to the makeshift altar. Windows in the hotel opened as people were drawn to watch. Shortly after Mass had started, two women came scurrying out of the hotel entrance to join us. From Argentina, they were also walking the Camino.
Mass being said in O Porriño during the laity’s pilgrimage—what the photo doesn’t get across is the two busy bars behind us.
No sooner had communion finished, rain started to come down. Monsignor Keith suggested we better head into the hotel to finish. As the final hymn was sung in the hotel’s dining room, outside on the other side of the window, our indomitable thurible swinger continued his pendulum-like motions as the rain sent the curves of his Dali-esque moustache downwards. After the final blessing, tears were in the eyes of one of the Argentinian women, her hands clasped together in front of her face. Whether it was the dogged determination of our thurible swinger, or another part of the Mass, something had clearly spoken to her heart.
During the seminarians’ Camino, Masses were usually said in the middle of the day, beside the Camino trail, after we had broken march, so to speak. Stoles, alter linen and everything needed for communion emerged out of rucksacks and a makeshift altar was established with the best surface was available. When Fr Neil Scott, whose ministry is in prisons, said Mass in a forest clearing utilising some granite picnic tables, his words were accompanied by a Galician bagpipe being played full blast by a lady on the other side of the clearing busking for tips from passing pilgrims.
The reaction from other pilgrims to these impromptu Masses was fascinating. Some would stop, put rucksacks down and attend the Mass—but not many. Some paused, watched for a bit, crossed themselves and moved on. Others hesitated, looked puzzled, if not uncomfortable, before quickly moving on. There were those who steamed on by with barely a glance.
There is a lot of human psychology at play on a Camino (an anthropologist would also find it fascinating). As there is afterwards. The emotional come down post Camino is always tough. You’ve become part of a team that becomes tighter knit with each day—some of those Ordinariate guys have really lived before taking Holy Orders based on the personal stories shared—only to then have it suddenly disbanded. To experience that twice, and in such quick succession, really brought home how much we rely on others for support and inspiration.
(A final prayer said in front of Santiago de Compostela Cathedral at the end of the seminarians’ Camino—and, as ever, being filmed and photographed by other pilgrims.)
As General William Slim noted in his book Defeat into Victory about the war in Burma: “Sometimes, doubt and fear slunk in upon me. And then I walked once more among my soldiers, and I, who should have inspired them, not for the first or last time, drew courage from them.”
We live in very doubtful times. Though that seemed far less the case during two back-to-back Caminos that touched so many people’s hearts and souls—both the pilgrims in our two groups, but also those we met and who saw us.
If you fancy a physical and spiritual workout and putting your heart and soul through a Camino, think about joining the Catholic Herald’s next Camino to Assisi in Umbria, Italy, at the end of September, early October 2023.
James Jeffrey is a freelance journalist, writer, editor, and the Herald’s official pilgrim guide who splits his time between the US, the UK, the Iberian Peninsula and further afield. Follow him on Twitter: @jrfjeffrey. For more on the Camino go to www.santiagotrails.co.uk.
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