Since 2012 the east coast of Kent has had a new attraction – or at least, new since the Reformation. The Shrine of St Augustine of Canterbury, inaugurated four years ago in Ramsgate, commemorates the great Benedictine monk who arrived near here in 597 with a mission to convert the English.
The shrine has attracted much interest. Radio 4 came to record Sunday Worship; the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation gave a generous grant towards the programme of restoring the church (designed by Pugin); Cardinal Burke has visited to celebrate Mass. Most importantly, many pilgrims are coming to pray.
Last year there were more than 1,000 group trips and “well over 10,000” individual visits, according to shrine manager John Coverdale. Half a dozen other sites have asked for advice: they recognise there is a hunger for this kind of experience.
To become a shrine – a place marked out as a pilgrimage destination – you need the approval of the bishop or local ordinary. This has just happened to St Dominic’s Priory, London’s gorgeous Dominican church, which from October will be designated as a shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Shrines are in fashion (if that’s the right word) – including the more long-established ones. Knock’s renewal programme has just culminated in the installation of a 1.5 million-piece mosaic (see page 8). Walsingham is running a £10 million appeal to pay for new buildings and expand its work. So why are shrines growing in popularity?
It may be part of a wider story: the rehabilitation of popular piety, which has at times been dismissed as out of date. When St Thérèse of Lisieux’s relics visited Britain, the then Bishop of Portsmouth Crispian Hollis admitted that he and his fellow bishops weren’t “over the moon with enthusiasm”. Witnessing people’s devotion changed his mind.
Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society, says: “The downplaying of the cult of Our Lady and the saints, of shrines, relics, and blessings, since the 1960s, led to a great impoverishment of Catholic life, and it is heartening to see renewed interest in them.”
Mgr John Armitage, rector of the Walsingham Shrine, which has hundreds of thousands of visitors a year (and rising), says organisations like Youth 2000 have done a lot to encourage retreats. Younger visitors often base their time at Walsingham around the rosary and exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. “Young people are very connected to those things, when they’re introduced to them in a positive way,” he says.
Ramsgate, too, is a place of worship rather than just a travel destination: there are concerts and exhibitions, but they also have processions and veneration of the relic of St Augustine.
But shrines also appeal to those with little knowledge of traditional devotion. Fr Richard Gibbons, Rector of Knock, thinks the shrine can play a part in renewing Ireland’s faith. “If you’re going to reach out, it’s a place for people to simply come and take in the atmosphere.” Casual visitors can be surprised: one decided to go to Confession for the first time in 15 years.
Ramsgate, too, has a close link with evangelisation: St Augustine of Canterbury is considered the “Apostle to the English”. John Coverdale says that a lot of new priests come to the shrine. “There’s something attractive about the man who first brought Christianity, and they’ve got that evangelist’s spirit when they’re newly ordained,” he says. “They’re raring to go.”
A common reason for visiting a shrine is a need to make space for God in the middle of a hectic world.
As Mgr Armitage puts it: “You’re in a different environment, you’re not under pressure while you’re there. It’s a beautiful place and you have the time to pray. Inevitably things are going to happen.”
Coverdale makes an intriguing suggestion. “I reckon, in the next few decades, shrines will become what monasteries once were.” They will become the normal place “for retreats or spiritual rejuvenation”.
“Shrines will become the centres that people visit, for a day or a couple of days, and live a spiritual life at a shrine rather than a monastery. They’ll become sort of spiritual batteries.”
This year and next, one shrine will be especially in Catholic minds: Fátima in Portugal, where Our Lady appeared to three local shepherd children in 1916-17. The crowds will testify to the mysterious power of shrines: that for perhaps millions of people some little place, often in the middle of nowhere, can feel like home.
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