Itineraries of the Spirit

A Fair in Rome and Conference 2014

Expo: Itinerarios del Espiritu Expo: Journeys of the Spirit Expo: Pilgerwege
ORP: todo para los peregrinos a Roma ORP: organizing everything for the Rome pilgrims ORP: hier wird alles für die Rompilger organisiert
Caminos a Loreto… For Loreto pilgrims Stand der Pilgerwege nach Loreto
Agencia Agency Eine Pilgeragentur Fotos: Francisco Nuño © 2009

ROME, Francisco Nuño. My son Jorge and his son, my grandson Miguel, are preparing for a bicycle pilgrimage from the Cologne Cathedral in Germany to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain; the pilgrimage will be in July. It will be a month long pilgrimage through the roads of Santiago in Medieval Europe. For this reason, a recently held event in Rome during the last few days caught my attention, and I decided to visit it. The area known as the Fair of Rome was celebrating an exhibition and an international festival dedicated to promote the "Itineraries of the Spirit": Journeys of the Spirit Festival.

The Saint Augustine Roman Opera Pellgrinaggi organized this exhibition with the motto, Walk and sing, whereas a great many religious and cultural initiatives in Italy, Europe, and other countries have been demonstrated against the backdrop of pilgrimages and of religious trips that are presently displayed.

Five years until 2014

The so-called "Conference 2014" will be held in Schoenstatt at the beginning of February also encouraged me to learn what this professional and specialized exhibition offered. It is likely that in the year 2014, thousands of pilgrims will visit Schoenstatt and Rome thereby expressing gratitude and giving testimony to the great gift received through the founding of our Movement. The pilgrims will also come to be sent forth by the Holy Father to a ‘new evangelization’ of the new millennium through the Schoenstatt Shrines and the graces from the Covenant of Love with Mary. In this context, there are some practical suggestions for our probable pilgrimage to Rome.

On pilgrimage to Rome

The Roman Opera Pellegrinaggi in Rome is a Church institution that handles the logistics for the pilgrimages to the Shrines of Lourdes, Fatima, Santiago de Compostela, Czestochowa, and the Holy Land and it also offers hospitality services to pilgrims in Rome and Italy, as well as helping with the religious-cultural itineraries that they organize in the parishes, dioceses, relgious institutes and others among the public and associations of Italy and foreign places. The Opera offers guidance and information to visitors and the curious at their huge Stand at the Fair.

There is another entity at the Vatican that is dedicated to welcoming the pilgrims who arrive to Rome. It is the "Peregrinatio ad Petri Sedem A.P.S.A.". It is an organization of the Holy See that is available to the pilgrims for all events, especially general audiences, retreats, congresses, canonizations, and other religious celebrations and visits within Vatican City and around Christian Rome. It is a useful address to know and is necessary for obtaining tickets for access to the liturgical celebrations at St. Peter’s, and in all the Roman churches, and for the Holy Father’s general audiences. It assures hospitality for pilgrims preferably in the Institutes and Religious Houses of the Eternal City, and it also offers spiritual and pastoral assistance in the visits to holy places made fruitful by the blood of the apostles, Peter and Paul, and other martyrs of our Church.

Traveling through the roads of faith

I was surprised by the great number of offers for roads and religious tourism that I obtained at this exhibition. Different entities from several European and American countries at the exhibition offered information, and they encouraged interested people to travel on the "roads of the Spirit" in their countries. In the first place, they highlighted two of the great European roads like the road to Santiago, the Via Franigen, from Canterbury to Rome, and the routes crossing through Europe carrying pilgrims to Italian ports for reaching Jerusalem and Holy Land. In addition, there were many routes given that encourage one to travel by foot or bicycle to many places of our Christian faith.

As an example of what I have cited and also as an example of the initiative of the organizers, I want to mention the offers from countries as far as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil. In the Brazilian State of Rio Grande do Sul, on the border with Argentina and Paraguay, there is a treasure of historic value that has been discovered, and has been offered to travelers and pilgrims: the Archeological Sites for the Missions’ Route. The information provided says that to visit this area is like going back in time to witness the courage of the Jesuits and the Guaranis, who, in the name of the faith, raised the first Latin America country. The route takes one through Shrines, Churches, and paths that are a testimony to the Jesuit settlements.

Closer to Rome in Poland, for example, there are pilgrimages through the roads of Switokryskie visiting the Shrine with the relic of the Holy Cross (Swiety Krzyz) and scores of other Marian Shrines and churches dedicated to the Mother of God, Mary Most Holy. Hungary, another small European country, promotes the "Via Sancti Martín", a religious-cultural itinerary that departs from Szombathely, Hungary, the birth city of Bishop Martin. After 1,800 km (about 1,116 mi) of roads to the city of Tours in France, known as the Episcopal See of the Bishop St. Martin, it crosses Slovenia to reach this place.

Here in Italy, we have a great variety of holy places, abbeys, monasteries, and convents, "roads of the Spirit," and other religious-cultural routes. The names of Loreto, Pompeii, Assisi, Papua, San Giovanni Rotondo (Padre Pio), Subiaco, Manoppello are known throughout the world, and they attract thousands and thousands of pilgrims from all countries and races. The abbey road, from Subiaco to Montecasino, the different Shrine routes in the various Italian regions, the Marian roads, all invite us to also rediscover the meaning and the value of Marian devotion through these communal experiences with other people and through the message given by the many monuments of art found on these European roads of the Faith.

From Shrine to Shrine

Going through the halls of the different pavilions of the Fair of Rome and observing how the roads and routes of the Spirit were promoted, I imagined the many "roads of the Spirit" that are available to the Schoenstatters and their friends: almost two hundred MTA Shrines all over the world with thousands of Home shrines around them, and millions (can we already speak of millions?) of Pilgrim MTAs in the world. It is truly a unique world network raised and sustained by the force of the Spirit and the collaboration of many, many people who live in the strength of the Covenant of Love with Mary in the Schoenstatt Shrine.

While we returned to our Matri Ecclesiae Shrine in Belmonte through the wet Roman streets that were damaged by the heavy rains of this Italian winter without end, I imagined an Exhibition and International Festival on the 2014 horizon promoting the "roads of the Spirit" that our love for Mary has built in the last one hundred years of Schoenstatt history, and I also saw before me an entity that like Roman Opera Pellegrinaggi or the Peregrinatio ad Petri Sedem that would promote, welcome, and organize pilgrims who will come to Europe from MTA Shrines allover the world.

Translation: Celina Garza, San Antonio, TX, USA/amj