MOUNT ST. PATRICK – For the fourth year in a row, pilgrims assembled for the 67-kilometre walk, camp and pray, from Our Lady of Fatima, Renfrew, to the Shrine of St. Ann in Cormac.
Walking 25 kilometres a day over the beautiful hills of the colonization road, there were 90 registrants this year with 80 committed to walk the full length to Cormac.
That is double the number of pilgrims who signed up in the first year of the pilgrimage four years ago when Father Scott Murray first had the idea as the parochial vicar at Our Lady of Lourdes, in Pembroke, Westmeath and La Passe.
Murray had been on pilgrimages himself before, when he was going to school in Rome.
“It is a religious experience, particularly in the Catholic tradition,” he said. “There are a lot of good walking pilgrimages, the most famous the Camino in Spain.”
Pilgrimages have a long tradition in the Christian church, with pilgrims making their way to the holy sites in the life of Jesus; Bethlehem, Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, Murray said.
“There has always been that tradition in the Catholic Church of having a spiritual destination and walking to it. I really wanted to do that here.”
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