Why go on pilgrimage?

Walking toward a holy place: a definition

The English word pilgrim comes from the Latin peregrinus, "one who comes from elsewhere," "the stranger," literally "one who walks across the fields" (per agros)^[5]. The pilgrim is therefore, by definition, someone who leaves home and accepts being, for a time, a stranger on the road. A pilgrimage presupposes three elements: a starting point left behind, a path traveled with effort, and a sacred destination toward which one strains — the shrine.

The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, the reference document published by the Congregation for Divine Worship in 2001, defines this destination: a shrine is a place where, by decision of ecclesiastical authority, the faithful go on pilgrimage because God has shown a particular grace there, and where prayer finds a singular intensity^[6]. Pilgrimage is the movement that leads to that place.

Pilgrimage, religious tourism and hiking: not to be confused

The pilgrim sometimes takes the same roads as the tourist or the hiker, but the intention differs radically. The tourist visits a monument for its beauty or cultural interest; the hiker walks for exertion, nature, health; the pilgrim walks toward God and toward an expected grace. The journey is not an end in itself; it is an act of faith.

This distinction is not theoretical: the same path can be walked by all three, and the same man can move from tourism to pilgrimage along the way. That is precisely why the Church asks for discernment: not every trip to a shrine is, of itself, a spiritual act. A pilgrimage begins when walking becomes prayer and seeking God, not mere curiosity.

A practice of all religions, taken up and purified by the Church

Pilgrimage is not a Christian invention: it exists in almost all the great religions — the ascent of the Jews to Jerusalem, the Muslim hajj to Mecca, Hindu pilgrimages to the Ganges^[7]. This universal character says something about man: the human being is a homo religiosus who knows that not all places are equivalent, and that there are points where heaven seems closer to earth.

The Church did not reject this religious instinct; she took it up and purified it. As with every form of popular religiosity, the Catechism recalls that "pastoral discernment is needed" to "purify and correct the religious sense" underlying these devotions and make them "advance in knowledge of the mystery of Christ"^[8]. Christian pilgrimage is therefore not a magic of place: it is a human instinct raised up and directed toward the God of Jesus Christ.

Pilgrimage is not a devotion added late by medieval piety: it sinks its roots into the whole of salvation history, from the Exodus to Christ himself.

Israel's three great pilgrimage feasts

As early as the book of Exodus, God orders his people to go up three times a year to the place he will choose — the Temple of Jerusalem:

"Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place which he will choose: at the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of booths." — Deuteronomy 16:16^[9]

These three pilgrimage feasts (shalosh regalim in Hebrew, "the three ascents on foot") — Passover, Pentecost (Weeks) and Booths (Sukkot) — set the rhythm of Israel's religious life and gathered the scattered people around the one sanctuary^[10]. Going up to Jerusalem was not optional: it was a commandment, and the holy city became the geographical heart of the covenant.

"I was glad when they said to me": the psalms of ascent

These ascents to Jerusalem produced one of the finest bodies of biblical prayer: the psalms of ascent (Psalms 120 to 134), also called the gradual canticles, which pilgrims sang as they climbed the road to the Temple^[11]. The most famous opens with a cry of joy:

"I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the LORD!' Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!" — Psalm 122 (121):1-2^[12]

Another sings of the happiness of the one who carries the road to the sanctuary deep within:

"Blessed are the men whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are the highways to Zion!" — Psalm 84 (83):6^[13]

These texts show that, for the Bible, the desire to walk toward God is itself part of prayer. Pilgrimage is no detour: it is a form of praise.

Jesus the pilgrim: going up to Jerusalem

Christ himself was a pilgrim. The Gospel notes that his parents "went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover," and that at twelve years old he went up with them^[14]. As an adult, Jesus goes up to Jerusalem for the Jewish pilgrimage feasts — the expression returns like a refrain in the Gospels^[15]. The Catechism stresses that the life of Christ was "marked by pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great Jewish feasts"^[16].

Far from despising the sanctuary, Jesus honored it — to the point of driving out the merchants who turned it into a place of trade. Christian pilgrimage is therefore rooted in the very practice of the Lord.

The road to Emmaus: the archetype of Christian pilgrimage

After the Resurrection, one narrative becomes the model of every Christian pilgrimage: the walk to Emmaus (Luke 24). Two discouraged disciples are on the road; the Risen One joins them, walks with them, explains the Scriptures to them, "and their hearts burned within them"; then they recognize him in the breaking of the bread^[17]. It already contains the whole structure of a pilgrimage: the road, the hidden presence of Christ, the Word that enlightens, and the Eucharist in which he finally lets himself be recognized. Saint John Paul II made it the heart of the pilgrim's spirituality, called to "recognize the Savior in forgiveness received and bread shared"^[18].

This is the decisive objection, and it must be taken in its strongest version.

The objection: "a change of place brings no nearness to God"

In the fourth century, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great Greek doctors, wrote after a journey to the Holy Land a famous letter criticizing the craze for pilgrimages. His argument is formidable:

"A change of place brings no nearness to God. Wherever you are, God will come to you, if the dwelling of your soul is found to be such that the Lord can dwell in you." — Gregory of Nyssa, Letter 2^[19]

Gregory points out that the Beatitudes nowhere promise happiness to those who travel to Palestine, that the Holy Spirit is no more abundant in Jerusalem than in Cappadocia, and that an impure heart remains far from God "even on Golgotha"^[20]. The same intuition is found later among the Protestant Reformers and all those who judge pilgrimage superfluous: God is spirit, he is everywhere, so place adds nothing.

This objection is serious. It preserves a capital truth: it is never the place that saves, but the conversion of the heart. A pilgrimage without faith or charity is worth nothing.

The answer of the Incarnation: God lets himself be found in the flesh

But the objection, taken all the way, would prove too much. If God's universal presence made every place, every sign and every body useless, it would also make the sacraments, churches, and finally the Incarnation itself useless. Yet the heart of Christianity is precisely that the invisible and omnipresent God willed to make himself findable in flesh, time and place: he was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, died in Jerusalem. Christianity is not a religion of pure spirit; it is the religion of the Word made flesh.

From then on, walking toward a place where God has shown his grace does not deny his universal presence: it honors the way in which he chose to give himself — through sensible signs. Man is not a pure spirit: he has a body, and he also prays with his body. Setting out, toiling, kneeling in a shrine are human — therefore incarnate — ways of seeking God.

"The choice of a favorable place is not a matter of indifference for the authenticity of prayer"

That is exactly what the Catechism answers. While affirming that God can be prayed to everywhere, it teaches that place matters:

"The choice of a favorable place is not a matter of indifference for the authenticity of prayer. [...] Pilgrimages evoke our earthly journey toward heaven. They are traditionally special times for a renewal of prayer. For pilgrims seeking their living springs, shrines are special places for living 'in the Church' the forms of Christian prayer." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2691^[21]

The Catholic answer therefore does not deny Gregory's objection: it takes it up and goes beyond it. Yes, the heart comes before the place; but no, place is not nothing, for man is a being of flesh for whom space, body and gesture open or close the soul to grace. Pilgrimage is precisely what keeps faith from shrinking into an idea.

Beyond this or that shrine, pilgrimage carries a meaning that sheds light on the whole of Christian existence.

Homo viator: all of life is a pilgrimage

Christian tradition calls man homo viator, "man on the way." On earth the believer is like a traveler who has not yet reached his homeland. The letter to the Hebrews says this of the great believers: they acknowledged themselves "strangers and exiles on the earth," seeking a better "homeland," a heavenly one^[22]. And it concludes:

"For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come." — Hebrews 13:14^[23]

Saint Augustine gave this truth a luminous formula:

"Our homeland is heaven; there we shall no longer be strangers. Here below, each of us is a traveler even in his own house." — Saint Augustine, Sermon 111^[24]

Material pilgrimage is therefore only the visible sign of a permanent reality: the whole Christian life is a walk toward God. By making himself a pilgrim for a few days, the believer learns what he is all his life — a being on the road to the Kingdom.

The pilgrim Church

This image also holds for the whole Church. The Second Vatican Council calls her the Ecclesia peregrinans, "the pilgrim Church," which "goes forward on her pilgrim way amidst the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God" toward the heavenly homeland^[25]. The Virgin Mary herself "advanced in her pilgrimage of faith"^[26], going before the people of God on the road. The individual pilgrimage thus joins the march of the whole Body of Christ: one never walks alone, but with the whole Church, and even with the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory, united in the communion of saints, "still pilgrims on earth" in the Catechism's expression^[27].

Leaving, walking, arriving: the spiritual structure

The very structure of a pilgrimage is a catechesis in act. Leaving home means learning detachment and trust. Walking with effort means entering into asceticism and accepting one's poverty. Arriving at the shrine means tasting in advance the goal of life: the encounter with God. Pope Francis repeated this on the occasion of the Holy Year 2025:

"Pilgrimage is a fundamental element of every Jubilee event. Setting out on a journey is characteristic of those who go in search of the meaning of life." — Pope Francis, Spes non confundit^[28]

The question "why go on pilgrimage?" finds its most concrete answer in the spiritual fruits that the Church's thousand-year experience has observed.

Conversion and penance

Pilgrimage has been, from the origins, a path of conversion. Leaving one's habits behind, walking in discomfort, taking time to reread one's life: all this disposes one to reconciliation with God. That is why the great shrines are first of all places of confession: at Lourdes, Fatima and Compostela, lines of penitents wait for the sacrament. Pope Francis recalls that the jubilee pilgrimage leads "to the sacrament of reconciliation, the essential starting point of every true journey of conversion"^[29]. A pilgrimage is not a performance: it is a plea for forgiveness set in motion.

Renewed prayer and encounter

The Catechism counts pilgrimage shrines among the "places most favorable for prayer"^[30]. Torn away from daily scatter, the pilgrim rediscovers a more intense, simpler, truer prayer. Many testify that they met God — or found faith again — on a road or before a grotto. The shrine offers what the Catechism calls a place to live prayer "in the Church": adoration, rosary, Mass, silence^[31].

The effort of the body: asceticism, silence, stripping bare

Pilgrimage engages the body, and that is part of its value. Tiredness, blisters, the weight of the pack, the slowness of walking: all this is an asceticism that detaches from the superfluous and brings one back to the essential. Walking for days on end teaches silence and attentiveness, rare goods in an age of permanent noise. The body, by toiling, prays in its own way — and the soul, lightened, opens up. This is the exact opposite of a disincarnate religion.

Fraternity: walking together, making Church

One often sets out alone or in a small group; one arrives brother to a thousand strangers. Pilgrimage creates a singular fraternity: on the road, social differences fade, mutual help springs up spontaneously, and common prayer binds strangers together. It is an experience of the Church in the most tangible sense: a people on the march, sharing the same hope. Many vocations, family reconciliations and lasting friendships were born on these roads.

Pilgrimage and indulgences: the treasury of the Church

Since the first Jubilee of 1300, the Church has attached to certain pilgrimages the possibility of gaining an indulgence — the "remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven"^[32]. This is not "buying" forgiveness: the sin must first have been forgiven through confession. The indulgence draws on the "treasury" of the communion of saints, and always presupposes conversion of heart, confession, Communion and prayer for the pope's intentions. Pilgrimage is one of its traditional conditions. For the detail of this doctrine, see the article on indulgences and plenary indulgences.

Healing and graces

Finally, the history of shrines is studded with graces — conversions, peace recovered, and sometimes physical healings rigorously examined. Since 1883 Lourdes has had a Medical Bureau that submits unexplained healings to a severe scientific inquiry before any ecclesial recognition; out of millions of sick pilgrims, only seventy-two healings have been officially recognized as miraculous by the Church, proof of the rigor of the sifting^[33]. The Church never promises miracles; but she is not surprised that the God of the Incarnation continues to act where crowds come to pray to him. On this point, see the dossier on the healings at Lourdes.

Christian pilgrimage has never ceased. Its historical continuity is itself an argument: it is no fashion, but a constant of the faith.

The first pilgrims: Helena and Egeria

As soon as the peace of the Church allowed it, in the fourth century, Christians flocked to the Holy Land. Saint Helena, mother of Constantine, set the movement going around 326 by having the Holy Places cleared and honored^[34]. A few decades later, the pilgrim Egeria left an Itinerarium describing the liturgies of Jerusalem with precision^[35]. Saint Jerome settled near Bethlehem; Roman matrons like Paula gave up everything to live near the Sepulchre. Christian pilgrimage was born, and it would never stop.

Rome and the roads of medieval Europe

At Rome, people came to pray ad limina apostolorum, "at the threshold of the apostles," on the tombs of Peter and Paul. In the Middle Ages, three great destinations dominate: Jerusalem, Rome and Compostela. The roads fill with hospices, bridges and churches; the twelfth-century Codex Calixtinus, whose fifth book is a true guide to the roads, shrines and stages, serves as the first "guidebook" of the pilgrim to Saint James^[36]. Pilgrimage shapes the geography, economy and spirituality of Europe.

The jubilees, from 1300 to 2025

In 1300, Pope Boniface VIII proclaims the first Jubilee with the bull Antiquorum habet fida relatio, granting an exceptional indulgence to the pilgrims of Rome^[37]. The crowds are such that the institution becomes permanent. Seven centuries later, the 2025 Jubilee gathered the Church again around the same intuition: walking together toward the Holy Door, the sign of Christ who is "the door" (Jn 10:9).

The Church does not defend pilgrimage naively. She knows its deviations and herself calls for discernment. Here are the main objections, and the Catholic answer.

"It is superstition" or "works to earn heaven"

This is the gravest objection. The risk exists: believing that merely touching a stone or reaching a shrine automatically produces an effect, independently of faith. That would be superstition, which the Catechism clearly condemns: to tie the efficacy of a religious act to its "mere materiality," "apart from the interior dispositions" required, "is to fall into superstition"^[38].

But pilgrimage rightly understood is the exact opposite: it does not save by the journey, but by the conversion it serves. Nor is it "salvation by works": the pilgrim does not earn forgiveness by his miles; he disposes his heart to receive a grace that remains God's free gift. The distinction is clear: place and effort are means, never magical causes.

"Religious tourism and trade"

The reproach is old — Jesus drove the merchants from the Temple — and sometimes well founded: certain great shrines can turn into markets. The Church does not deny it. That is precisely why she asks for "pastoral discernment" to "purify" popular piety^[39], and why the 2001 Directory frames the organization of pilgrimages so that they remain acts of faith and not consumer products^[40]. The risk of deviation does not invalidate the practice: it calls us to live it rightly.

"The money would be better given to the poor"

This is Judas's objection before the perfume poured over Jesus: "Why was this ointment not sold and given to the poor?" (Jn 12:5). Christ's answer holds here: service of the poor and worship given to God do not oppose each other. An authentic pilgrimage nourishes charity rather than competing with it: it converts the heart, and shrines are often centers of service to the sick and the destitute — Lourdes, par excellence, is organized around welcoming the most fragile. The false dilemma "God or the poor" misunderstands that love of God is the source of love of the poor.

The Reformers abolished pilgrimages

In the sixteenth century, Luther and Calvin rejected pilgrimages, judging them unbiblical and prone to abuses — Luther targets them as early as 1520 among the practices to be abolished, and Calvin mocks the cult of relics that was often their goal^[41]. The Council of Trent, in reply, confirmed the legitimacy of venerating relics and shrines, while demanding the correction of abuses^[42]. The Catholic Church therefore did not ignore the Protestant critique: she heard it where it was just (correcting excesses), while refusing to throw away with the abuse a practice rooted in the Bible, lived by Christ and attested without interruption since the Fathers. This is the hermeneutic of continuity applied to popular devotion.

Since a pilgrimage is worth what the intention and the conversion it serves are worth, the Church offers a few markers for living it fruitfully.

Before: intention and preparation

A pilgrimage is prepared. It is good to define an intention — a grace asked for, an act of thanksgiving, a penance, the remembrance of a deceased loved one — and to dispose oneself through prayer. Many entrust their intention to a departed loved one or unite it with that of the whole Church. Spiritual preparation matters more than logistical preparation.

During: prayer, sacraments, silence

On the road and at the shrine, the heart of the pilgrimage is sacramental: confession, which makes all things new, and the Eucharist, the goal of the walk as at Emmaus. To these are joined the rosary, the Stations of the Cross, adoration, and wide stretches of silence, without which walking becomes tourism again. The pilgrim keeps his intention present and welcomes encounters as gifts.

After the return: bearing the fruit

A pilgrimage does not end at the shrine's door: it must transform life. The Directory stresses that the return home is part of the pilgrimage: the pilgrim comes back bearing a grace he must make bear fruit in ordinary life^[43]. A successful pilgrimage is not measured by miles traveled, but by the conversion that remains once one is home. That is where it is proved whether one truly walked toward God — and not only toward a place.

Pilgrimage touches on many other questions treated in Ignispedia:

• What is an indulgence? and What does the Church say about plenary indulgences? — the grace attached to certain pilgrimages.
• What is the communion of saints? and Why pray for the dead? — one never walks alone.
• Why venerate relics?, Why light candles? and Why use holy water? — other gestures of popular piety.
• Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of Guadalupe — two of the great Marian centers of pilgrimage.