Pilgrimage of hope” “

300 pilgrims from 25 European countries together with their bishops left Madrid on 17 April for the pilgrimage “On the roads of hope”, bound for Santiago de Compostela: Their route took them through Burgos, Leòn, Ponferrada and other towns. The pilgrimage was organized by COMECE, the Commission of the episcopates of the European Community, to celebrate EU enlargement. The pilgrimage will last until 21 April. Each day the pilgrims will walk for several hours, followed by an ecumenical service, a mass and a lecture by an important personality in European public life. At the end of the pilgrimage, a congress entitled “European Union: hope and responsibility – theological readings of the future of united Europe” will be held in Santiago de Compostela (21 to 23 April). Guest speakers will include MICHEL CAMDESSUS , Cardinal ANTONIO M. ROUCO VARELA , PETER SERRACINO INGLOTT , and Father NOTKER WOLF . From 23 to 24 April the bishops of COMECE will then hold their spring plenary meeting, which will be attended for the first time by the delegates of the new member states. Main issues at the meeting will be: the intergovernmental conference on the draft EU constitutional treaty, the elections for the European Parliament on 10-13 June and the negotiations on EU funds for 2007-2013. AN “ECUMENICAL” PILGRIMAGE. A “welcome back into Europe” to the ten new countries that will enter the EU on 1st May and an invitation to work together “to construct a Europe united in peace, justice and solidarity”: these are the contents that form the background to the pilgrimage to Santiago. Some forty Catholic bishops and representatives of the Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Old Catholic and Reformed Churches are participating in it. They include, just to cite some names: Bishop Athanasios de Achaïa, of the Greek Orthodox Church of the EU; Archbishop Julián Barrio Barrio of Santiago de Compostela; Bishop Carlos López Lozano, Spanish Episcopal Reformed Church; and Erik Vikström, Lutheran bishop of Porvoo, Finland. Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, has sent a video-message of support. A “CHURCH ON PILGRIMAGE”. Alternating stretches travelled on foot and by bus, the 300 pilgrims (with daily stages of 5-10 km) have already reached Burgos, Léon and Ponferrada, passing through little villages, huge expanses of green fields swept by the cold winds of the ocean, under driving rain and even snow. Even the more elderly bishops have walked for many kilometres in bad weather, praying to “offer to the world a re-found Europe”, said local Bishop JULIÀN LÒPEZ MARTIN in the beautiful gothic cathedral of Lèon. “Europe – he said – must be a new model of unity in diversity, open to other continents, welcoming to outsiders and active in solidarity. We have a need to travel together also along the road of ecumenism, as precious gesture of brotherly solidarity”. Bishop ADRIANUS VAN LUYN of Rotterdam and vice-president of COMECE, indicated, at the start of the pilgrimage, some tasks to which the Church is called to build the new Europe of our time: “dialoguing effectively with people: a willingness to listen to and a sincere interest in others, especially the young, are indispensable before passing to catechesis; preaching the gospel of Christ; and being “hospitable to strangers”. This latter task, in particular, said the Bishop of Rotterdam, “is not very popular in Europe today. It seems that Europe on the road to unification is somewhat reluctant to welcome all the ethnic groups of the new countries joining the Union. Moreover, barricades are being erected to block the influx of political and economic refugees from other continents”. THE PILGRIMS SPEAK. What does it mean to spend a month travelling on foot the 775 kilometres of the “French route” that traverses the Pyrenees and passes through picturesque villages, huge expanses of green fields and barren tracts to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela? “The fascination of the road to Santiago is something indescribable”, says Manuel, a fifty-year-old Spaniard who calls himself an “agnostic”, lives in Holland, but is already taking part in his third pilgrimage with his staff and haversack, the typical symbols of the pilgrims who go to Santiago. Under the reflections of the gothic stained glass in the cathedral of Lèon, he tells of the exertion of these days spent on the road (he set out on 3 April), but what mainly emerges from his account is the joy of pilgrimaging, “without exactly knowing why one is doing it”. Similar is the comment of Ian, a young German from Hamburg, who describes himself as an “atheist”, but who has taken to the road “to rediscover himself”. Natalie, a French lady in her thirties, has tackled alone “el camino de Santiago” with nothing but a small rucksack, a great deal of courage and “the desire to find the profound meaning of my life”. BISHOP GRAB (CCEE), “CHRISTIANS DO NOT SURRENDER IN THE FACE OF OBSTACLES”. An appeal to European Christians “not to surrender in the face of the obstacles” of a “political, economic and cultural order that disconcert and divide” and that are linked to the construction of the new Europe, is made today by Bishop Amédée Grab of Chur (Switzerland), president of the CCEE (Council of the European Episcopal Conferences). Bishop Grab was speaking to the 300 pilgrims from 25 European countries who have been taking part since 17 April in the pilgrimage to Santiago organized by COMECE, the Commission of the episcopates of the European Union to celebrate EU enlargement to 10 new countries, most in Eastern Europe. The pilgrims – including some forty bishops and representatives of other Christian confessions – arrived this morning at Villafranca del Bierzo, where they celebrated the usual daily mass. They will walk today on the last eight-kilometre stage from Cebreiro to Padornelo, and arrive at their goal, Santiago de Compostela, in the evening. There they will pass through the Holy Door of the cathedral, opened on the occasion of the Compostelan Holy Year (“Xacobeo 2004”), and be received by Msgr. Juliàn Barrio Barrio, archbishop of Santiago. In his homily today Bishop Grab recalled some problems linked to European construction, such as the eagerly awaited constitutional treaty and the insertion of a reference to Christianity in its preamble. He invited Christians to continue to “hope, which does not mean passively waiting”. “Our communities throughout Europe – he said – must be the actualised and dynamic prolongation of the community of Jerusalem. So strong preaching is needed to respond to the current loss of certainties. It must denounce not only the moral erosion that the laws tend to make official (abortion, production and destruction of embryos, euthanasia and assisted suicide…) but also all the threats that the profit motive, the adoration of money, pose to justice and the dignity of the human person”. Msgr. Grab concluded his homily by expressing the hope that “our Churches be places of holiness, dedication to the poor, the sick, the outcast and, on this basis, places of prayer, of sacramental life, of promotion of vocations to the priesthood and to religious life, and of conjugal and family virtues”. The pilgrimage will end tomorrow morning with a solemn Eucharist in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, officiated by Archbishop Julìan Barrio Barrio. The European congress will open in the afternoon. Patrizia Caiffa, SIR correspondent in Santiago de Compostela Ecumenical prayer for “the ten” An ecumenical ceremony to celebrate the entry of the ten new member states in the European Union will take place in the Dominican church in Brussels on the afternoon of 29 April. The event is being promoted by the Conference of European Churches (CEC), which was founded in 1959 and represents 125 churches of Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican and Old Catholic tradition in all the countries of Europe, as well as 40 associated organizations. The sermon will be given, in the presence of many laypeople and ecclesiastics of the various traditions, by Pastor Jean-Arnold de Clermont, CEC president.