Is it me or can Catholics be a bit headstrong these days? I asked myself that question after attempting to marshal the Catholic Herald’s latest pilgrimage from Coimbra to Fátima. We all got to the end and, despite some narrowing of eyes over route distance estimations and the assured presence of café breaks that didn’t materialise, without mutiny. Yet there were times when I thought I could have been in charge of a group of radical students on pilgrimage.
Especially during dinner times—those glasses of fine Douro and Alentejo red wine loosening minds and lips—I strained to keep up with conversations railing across the table against the wrongs and injustices of society. Those impassioned mealtimes, along with discussions on the trail ranging from the problems with Oxford’s 15-minute city traffic restrictions, to myopic media narratives about Covid-19 lockdowns and feminism, to the hypocrisy of US President Joe Biden’s proclaimed Catholic credentials, got me thinking how pilgrimage increasingly serves as an act of rebellion against many of the shibboleths of the modern world.
