Does a boom in pilgrimages signal a religious revival? That’s doubtful
Above the northern French town of Lisieux, a vast white basilica rises on a sweeping, tree-lined promontory. In the cavernous Byzantine-style interior, the shrine of St Thérèse of Lisieux is illuminated by a maze of candles, overlooked by columns and vaulted mosaics.
When the cross-shaped basilica was completed in 1954, three decades after the youthful St Thérèse’s canonisation by Pope Pius XI, much of Lisieux still lay in ruins from fighting which followed the nearby D-Day landings.
In the decades since, aided by the canonisation of her parents, Saints Louis and Zélie Martin, originally interred on the Way of the Cross behind the basilica, it’s become a place associated with modern sanctity. Today it is France’s second most popular Catholic sanctuary after Lourdes.
Virtually all of Europe’s Catholic shrines have reported increased visitors over the past two decades. In Portugal, the Marian sanctuary of Fatima drew 1.5 million when Pope Francis visited in May 2017 for the centenary of its apparitions. Over the course of the year it attracted 9.4 million, according to Church figures.
In neighbouring Spain, similar numbers are descending annually on Santiago de Compostela, as the Way of St James (Camino de Santiago) pilgrimage, explored in a recent BBC series, also gains in popularity. Last year, more than 300,000 people from 150 countries walked the Camino, a hundred times as many as three decades previously, when barely 3,000 attempted the journey. A further 10 per cent increase is forecast for 2018, with three quarters coming from outside Spain. And while Santiago’s administrators accept that not all pilgrims are motivated by Christian belief, they say that many claim some form of Christian conversion on the way.
“Though some people insist most don’t do the Camino for religious reasons, this isn’t true,” Pilinchi Romero, a Sacred Heart Sister who runs one of Santiago’s pilgrim shelters, told Spain’s Catholic Vida Nueva weekly. “I talk peacefully and deeply all the time with people who’ve nothing to do with my faith and don’t believe, but who’ve been helped by religious encounters and left happy by coming here”.
In Britain, at least 30 pilgrimage routes have been created or reopened in the past decade, according to a newly created Pilgrimage Trust, while England’s best-known shrine at Walsingham, demolished during the Reformation, now brings in 250,000 pilgrims yearly.
Researchers cite a combination of spiritual possibilities and closeness to nature as reasons for the new popularity of pilgrimages, a reverence for the formal splendour of some religious shrines, and a curiosity about the age-old hopes and expectations associated with them.
“The desire to extend horizons is deeply entrenched in people – and it seems many inherently yearn for the pilgrimage experience,” Raimund Joos, a German expert, told the Deutsche Welle broadcaster recently. “There are more and more virtual worlds. What’s often missing is direct contact with the world and with people – and that’s what a pilgrimage offers.”
For the Church, pilgrimages clearly offer a chance, helped by committed lay Christians, to reach out to a sceptical society. Down the Normandy coast from Lisieux, the Gothic basilica of Mont-Saint-Michel (pictured) was originally built as a shrine by Bishop Aubert of Avranches.
It later served as a fortress and prison. Today, a small monastic community is back in residence, and three million people arrive annually, many in search of prayer and contemplation.
“It’s important there are places like this which still speak of God and point towards heaven – and where the religious vocation is still visibly lived out,” explained Fr Fabien-Marie, prior of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, whose members now run the abbey. “Although the faith may have lost ground in a country like this, there are still religious people everywhere, however discreet and unassuming their presence might sometimes be.”
George Gandy, an English historian who lives nearby, thinks Mont-Saint-Michel’s continued importance reflects its modern identity as a symbol of national independence. He is doubtful as to how far the new interest in pilgrimages signifies a rediscovery of the Christian faith.
“French society remains deeply secular, and religion is still a private matter here, so the most impressive and moving experiences are also usually very personal ones,” he said. “If big Christian centres like this continue attracting secular people, enabling them to increase their spiritual awareness, this might over time signal some wider, collective up-turn in Christian commitment. But this will clearly require much effort and dedication.”
Last January, the new Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, urged Church members at his installation Mass to remember God would touch people who, in the complexity of modern life, were still “capable of recognising and listening to him”.
As more and more Europeans take to the pilgrim paths, that will be a challenge for the future.
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