National Eucharistic Pilgrimage connects Catholics across US to 2024 Congress

By Maria Wiering OSV News

Mike Wavra thinks of the 2024 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage as “an opportunity to walk with the Lord.”

He and his wife, Cindi, both 65-year-old retirees, plan to join the pilgrimage at its northern launch point in Minnesota in May 2024, and then walk for about a week, before rejoining the pilgrims seven weeks later in Indianapolis for the 10th National Eucharistic Congress.

The Wavras, members of St. Bernard in Thief River Falls in the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, are among thousands of Catholics from across the United States anticipated to participate in next year’s pilgrimage to the Congress, part of the U.S. bishops’ three-year National Eucharistic Revival that began in 2021. The pilgrimage has four routes, beginning in the north, south, east and west of the country. Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston is chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, which is overseeing the revival.

Pilgrims traveling in the “eucharistic caravans” will begin their journeys with Pentecost weekend celebrations May 17-18, 2024, leaving May 19. They will converge on Indianapolis July 16, 2024, the day before the five-day Congress opens. The pilgrimage is an opportunity for prayer and evangelization, and a way to engage Catholics unable to attend the Congress, said Tim Glemkowski, the National Eucharistic Congress’ executive director.

“What the pilgrimage does is it builds us in prayerful anticipation for what God is going to do at the Congress,” he told OSV News May 5. “It’s two months of us pilgrimaging, fasting, praying, interceding, asking the Lord to renew his Church, his bride, in those five days. … They’re not two different things. It’s one pilgrimage: five days of which happen in a stadium in Indianapolis, and two months of which happen across our country on the way there.”

Weekend stops in major cities will include special liturgies, eucharistic adoration, processions and service opportunities, Glemkowski said.

The northern “Marian Route” that the Wavras plan to take begins in northern Minnesota at Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The route follows the river to St. Paul and Minneapolis, its first weekend stop. Then the route heads south to Rochester, Minnesota, and then east through La Crosse and Green Bay, Wisconsin. It continues through Milwaukee, Chicago and Notre Dame, Indiana, before arriving in Indianapolis.

The “Juan Diego Route” begins more than 1,600 miles south of Lake Itasca in Brownsville, Texas, at the U.S.-Mexico border. It will follow Texas’ eastern border through Corpus Christi and Houston, and continue through New Orleans; Mobile, Alabama; Atlanta; Nashville, Tennessee; and Louisville, Kentucky.

The “Seton Route” — named for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first U.S.-born saint — begins in New Haven, Connecticut, and continues through New York; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Washington; Pittsburgh; and Steubenville, Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio.

The “Junipero Serra Route” begins in San Francisco — with hope of walking over the Golden Gate Bridge — and continues through Reno, Nevada; Salt Lake City; Denver; North Platte and Omaha, Nebraska; Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri; and St. Louis.

At more than 2,200 miles long, the Junipero Serra Route is the longest and most rigorous route. Pilgrims will use transport to cross sections of their route, but some of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains are expected to be crossed on foot. In an interview with Bishop Cozzens for a February episode of the popular podcast “Catholic Stuff You Should Know,” co-host Father John Nepil said he wanted to walk with the Eucharist and fellow priests in the Rockies over the highest elevation the pilgrimage routes will reach. There is the physical challenge, and “there’s always been a close connection for me between thinking of the Eucharist as the source and summit of our faith, and the ways we reflect on the eucharistic high points as a place of transcendence, and then the way it connects to the mountains,” Father Nepil, a priest of the Archdiocese of Denver and vice rector of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, told OSV News May 8.

Modern Catholic Pilgrim, a pilgrimage nonprofit with offices in Minnesota and California, is organizing the national pilgrimage. The routes include important Catholic sites in the United States, such the 18thcentury ministry of St. Junipero Serra in what is now California, the Philadelphia tombs of St. John Neumann and St. Katharine Drexel, and in Wisconsin, the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, the only approved Marian apparition in the United States.

Each pilgrimage is expected to have 12 “perpetual pilgrims,” young adults, including two seminarians, committed to traveling the entire route, from their launch points to Indianapolis. Each route also will include priest chaplains who will carry the Eucharist, usually in a monstrance specially designed for the pilgrimage.

Holy Year 2025 website to go live; registration opens in the fall

By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service

The Vatican office in charge of coordinating plans for the Holy Year 2025 announced they are launching a new website and releasing an app to help people register and to guide them along their pilgrimage in Rome.

By registering online at iubilaeum2025.va or on the jubilee app, people will receive a free digital “pilgrim’s card,” which will be needed to participate in jubilee events, especially gaining access to the Holy Door at St. Peter’s Basilica, said Msgr. Graham Bell, undersecretary of the Dicastery for Evangelization’s section that is coordinating the Holy Year.

The jubilee website is available in nine languages, he said at a news conference at the Vatican May 9. People can begin registering online starting in September, he said, “by clicking on the ‘participate’ button.” After registering, people will be able to access a personal page on the site’s “pilgrim’s zone,” which will also go live in September.

Registrants will receive a digital “pilgrim’s card,” which is a personal QR code needed to access jubilee events and better facilitate the pilgrimage to the Holy

Door, the monsignor said. There also will be an option to purchase a “service card” for a nominal fee to receive special discounts for transportation, lodging, food and museums during the pilgrimage.

The jubilee website and app will give news and information on the Holy Door of St. Peter’s and the other basilicas as well as offer the possibility of organizing one’s own pilgrimage within the city, Msgr. Bell said.

“Rome has always been a cultural attraction and our aim is that the pilgrim may also become a tourist, just as the tourist may be fascinated by the pilgrim experience,” said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, pro-prefect of the section.

Starting in September, he said, they will open an exhibition “with works by the great Spanish Renaissance artist, El Greco.”

The pieces “have never left Spain and are being made available for this very occasion,” he said. The exhibit will be held in the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone facing onto Piazza Navona and will feature El Greco’s three masterpieces: “The Baptism of Christ,” “Christ Carrying the Cross” and “Christ Blessing.”

Archbishop Fisichella said Pope Francis has asked

Catholics worldwide to prepare for the next jubilee year by spending 2023 studying the documents of the Second Vatican Council, especially its four constitutions, which focused on: the liturgy; the church as the people of God; Scripture; and the role of the church in the modern world.

“In order to help local churches in their catechetical, human and especially Christian formation paths, and to give younger people the opportunity to know and rediscover the central contents of the council,” he said, the dicastery published a series of 35 small volumes titled, “Council Notebooks,” in December.

The “notebooks” have already been translated into Spanish in one hardcover volume titled, “Cuadernos del Concilio,” he said, and they are now being translated into English by ATC Publishers-India.

Since the pope wants 2024 to be dedicated to prayer in preparation for the jubilee, the dicastery will publish an in-depth series called “Notes on Prayer” to promote “the centrality of prayer, personal and communal,” the archbishop said.

“We are studying the possibility of a ‘school of prayer’ with pathways that would cover the vast world of prayer,” he added.

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