By any modern logic, the walking pilgrimage ought to have disappeared. We have cars, trains and planes to take us almost anywhere we want to go, and usually in a fraction of the time. Yet more and more people across Europe and America are choosing to walk instead.
Twenty years ago, fewer than 75,000 pilgrims walked the Camino de Santiago. Last year, more than half a million did. Elsewhere, the signs of revival are multiplying. The three-day pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres attracted 20,000 walkers this year, while in America a growing number of Catholics are lacing up their boots for multi-day pilgrimages to shrines in Pennsylvania, New York and Oklahoma. Italy, too, has entered the movement, launching a new 1,500-kilometre Way of St Francis across six regions. Pilgrimage is once again becoming a familiar feature of Catholic life. The numbers tell us that something is happening; the more interesting question is why.
