Pope Francis shouldn’t be the one Catholic making penitential pilgrimages this yr. In several cities in america, tons of of pilgrims have participated in Catholic walking pilgrimages geared toward raising awareness of the reason behind racial justice. Modern Catholic Pilgrim, the corporate organizing these pilgrimages, goals to reform the culture of the American Church—and even secular society—through the spiritual practices of hospitality and pilgrimage.
In May, the non-profit and the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., hosted the primary week-long Walking Together pilgrimage. A gaggle of seven college students walked 86 miles across central Minnesota on a pilgrimage to George Floyd Square. In September, in Louisville, Ky., where police killed Breonna Taylor on March 13, 2020, pilgrims walked the third annual pilgrimage for racial justice. In October, a bunch of pilgrims in Minneapolis held vigil and visited sacred sites to commemorate the genocide of Native Americans, invoking the intercession of Servant of God Black Elk and St. Kateri Tekakwitha. And in November, on the feast of St. Martin de Porres, one other pilgrimage group will gather in Memphis for the second yr in a row to walk and pray for racial justice.
But this movement of walking pilgrimages began with only one pilgrim.
Will Peterson, 30, the founding father of Modern Catholic Pilgrim, made his first pilgrimage on a whim. He was a rising junior on the University of Notre Dame, interning in Chicago throughout the summer of 2012. After work one Friday, he took a train to Ottumwa, Iowa, about 300 miles west. Mr. Peterson spent that first night in Iowa sleeping under a tree. He called his journey a “proto-pilgrimage” because he didn’t have a prayer intention or clear destination. But he knew his purpose: practicing trust. “Like in Matthew—why will we worry, he clothes the lilies of the fields, he feeds the birds—I just desired to trust God that this can be an excellent experience,” he said.
“We imagine that through geographic pilgrimage and biblical hospitality, we’d have the opportunity to remodel our American society.”
The subsequent night, it looked like rain. Mr. Peterson attended a Saturday night vigil Mass, staying afterward to wish for several hours in front of the tabernacle. As he prayed, the priest let him be and left, locking the doors for the night. Mr. Peterson slept on a pew and took the train back to Chicago the following day.
Over the following yr, Mr. Peterson read texts at Notre Dame that deepened his faith, including G. K. Chesterton’s biography of St. Francis of Assisi and the writings of Dorothy Day. These saints’ embrace of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience and their dedication to the biblical practice of hospitality had convinced him that trust in God and biblical hospitality were “core elements of the religion.”
During spring break in his senior yr, Mr. Peterson took a train to Rugby, N.D., where he began his second attempt at pilgrimage. He asked the pastor on the local church if he could stay for 3 days. “I desired to explore whether or not we had a biblically hospitable church in america,” he said. He spent three days in Rugby and have become something of an area pilgrim celebrity.
The experience was so fulfilling that he thought others might wish to take part in something similar. Thus Modern Catholic Pilgrim was born. Mr. Peterson and his colleagues seek to instill the practice of geographical pilgrimage in america along with the art of hospitality. “We imagine that through geographic pilgrimage and biblical hospitality, we’d have the opportunity to remodel our American society,” said Mr. Peterson. They host a dozen or so pilgrimages annually, and Mr. Peterson helps coordinate hospitality for the pilgrimage groups with local hosts.
Mr. Peterson began to take into consideration how this spiritual practice of pilgrimage that meant a lot to him may very well be a way to foster racial reconciliation.
Mr. Peterson and his wife live within the Twin Cities, which became the epicenter of a renewed conversation about racial justice after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Mr. Peterson began to take into consideration how this spiritual practice of pilgrimage that meant a lot to him may very well be a way to foster racial reconciliation.
Last fall, Mr. Peterson approached Patrick Martin, the assistant director of campus ministry at St. John’s University in St. Cloud, Minn., to see if the school can be interested by a pilgrimage for racial justice that will start on the university and end at George Floyd Square. From the primary conversation, he found a believer.
“When Will approached me, I used to be like, this is ideal,” said Mr. Martin over Zoom. St. John’s campus ministry had never offered a trekking pilgrimage before. They’d led hikes out to the Stella Maris chapel near the abbey on campus—a favourite spot of monastic visitors like Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. “But we’d done nothing of this type, where we just hoofed it for the entire week,” Mr. Martin said. He led seven college students on an 86-mile walk across central Minnesota, most of it following a recent bike path called the Mississippi Regional Trail.
For many of those seven college pilgrims, the concept of a walking pilgrimage was unfamiliar. And most of them had never walked nearly as much as they did that week in May. Along with spiritual formation in small group meetings, the pilgrims were purported to prepare physically for the trek—their longest day of walking was 19 miles. But as busy college students, few had the time to coach.
Mr. Peterson hopes his organization lends support to local groups to construct a culture of pilgrimage here in america—and, as he noted, to create a culture of hospitality that enriches each host and guest.
They began on Monday, May 9, at St. John’s University—during a tornado warning. Courtney Huiras was one in all the primary students to indicate up. She said she sat outside within the rain with one other pilgrim for several minutes until the remaining of the group showed up.
Huiras, a sophomore at St. Benedict’s, the sister college of St. John’s, said that she first learned concerning the pilgrimage this past January online, and thought to herself, “There’s no way I’m going to try this”; 80 miles of walking sounded too daunting. But Pat Martin kept encouraging her to hitch, and she or he eventually said yes.
Along the route, they stayed at 4 different homes of Catholic parishioners and at a Lutheran parish. The pilgrims said their journey, and the ultimate destination of George Floyd Square, sparked loads of conversations about racial justice with their hosts.
Mr. Peterson said one in all Modern Catholic Pilgrim’s goals is to “make pilgrimage accessible.” International pilgrimage, Mr. Peterson said, “is about up for the 1 percent who can fly to Rome or the Holy Land or take a month off to do the Camino de Santiago.” So he hopes his organization lends support to local groups to construct a culture of pilgrimage here in america—and, as Mr. Peterson noted, to create a culture of hospitality that enriches each host and guest. Mr. Peterson has been constructing a web-based “hospitality network” on Modern Catholic Pilgrim’s site to assist connect pilgrims to potential hosts, even when the corporate cannot broker the connection directly.
Rev. Fuller said that the George Floyd Square Memorial, like Golgotha, is against the law scene.
Within the months leading as much as the pilgrimage in May, Mr. Peterson asked Catholic parishes along the pilgrimage route to seek out families who might have the opportunity to host large groups of pilgrims. He said a number of priests were unwilling or unsure of tips on how to make the ask to their parishioners or were concerned about liability. But, he said, most parishes were excited concerning the likelihood to support young people on the pilgrimage and were accepting of their nontraditional destination of George Floyd Square. Mr. Martin said the journey was the primary time he had “owned the identity of a pilgrim.”
Once they reached Minneapolis that Saturday, May 14, the school pilgrims stayed on the St. Jane House, a house of hospitality run by the Visitation Sisters in North Minneapolis. The Rev. Rozenia Fuller, one in all the pastors in the neighborhood who ministers at George Floyd Square, met them for dinner that night, and witnessed the strong community that they had built together on the road.
Trained at Princeton Divinity School, Rev. Fuller is a Baptist minister who has maintained a ministry of presence on the square for the past two years. Rev. Fuller said that the George Floyd Square Memorial, like Golgotha, is against the law scene. And that it’s a sacred place, because “the community there has decided that love is central—that they may center themselves around love,” he said by phone.
“It’s an area of power. It’s an area of pain and it’s an area of promise,” she added.
Ms. Mulligan said that Mr. Peterson’s invitation to co-sponsor a pilgrimage in the autumn of 2020 resonated with their goal of giving Black Catholics one other method to engage on this discussion of racial justice.
As happens at traditional pilgrimage sites, Rev. Fuller has encountered pilgrims and visitors from all around the world in George Floyd Square.
“What happens on thirty eighth and Chicago affects folks a lot in France that they arrive here. Folks are available and almost miss their flights simply to go to George Floyd Square, even only for 10 minutes,” Rev. Fuller said.
Each of those Walking Together pilgrimages invokes the patronage of Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman. Chatting with the U.S. bishops’ conference in 1989, Sister Bowman shared her experience as a Black Catholic woman in america and called for the church to face along with her. “Today we’re called to walk together in a recent way toward that Land of Promise and to rejoice who we’re,” she said in her address.
Janice Mulligan, the associate director within the Office of Multicultural Ministry on the Archdiocese of Louisville, finds that these pilgrimages offer an area for literal walking together and for learning about tips on how to accompany one another higher. Ms. Mulligan, who focuses much of her work on African American ministries, said that Mr. Peterson’s invitation to co-sponsor a pilgrimage in the autumn of 2020 resonated with their goal of giving Black Catholics one other method to engage on this discussion of racial justice. “His whole premise about biblical hospitality resonated with what was occurring and the type of things we were attempting to do,” Ms. Mulligan said.
Ms. Mulligan said the Walking Together pilgrimages are powerful because they take a well-known concept—pilgrimage—and reimagine it within the contemporary context of a polarized and divided American society. And, in its reimagining, pilgrimage helps ground participants of their communities, and find ways through division. “I like the best way we are able to come together, walk together and find holy places in our area people,” Ms. Mulligan said. “These experiences are helping people to raised understand the scope of where racism is touching various parts of our communities, and specifically our church,” she said.