U.S. bishops walk from O Cebreiro

[Deleted member 3000]

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/ ... st-in-god/

 

[MichaelB10398]

Thanks for posting the article. I would be interested in walking when other religious and priests were also walking. However, I really do enjoy everyone I meet. The Camino is an open road to all who are interested or called to walk it. For those who can be still, be silent, and listen the faith of the thousands that have walked before us have left a hymn of forgiveness, love, and great joy. May each of us lend our voices to this song of ages as we walk anew this path so well trod.

I am so grateful for each time I think of the Camino and what it means to me. It daily lifts me up and heals me from the noisy path of life.

 

[oursonpolaire]

There's no shortage of bishops on the Camino but they're difficult to spot, as few outdoor equipment shops supply mitres and copes in goretex. Victoria Matthews, now Bishop of Christchurch, NZ, and formerly Bishop of Edmonton (Alberta), walked the Camino seven times, once famously bringing along her ordination class with her (Anglican seminarians are notorious for being out-of-shape and unathletic, and it was a wonder if not a miracle that any of them lived)-- her cathedral chapter gave her a pair of purple boxers so that their bishop would remain respectable in the close quarters of the albergues. Msgr Gendron of Saint Jean de Longeuil is a repeat offender and he blogged a recent Camino along with another francophone bishop from western Canada. One flippant friend suggested that we can expect to see more ambitious Canadian clerics clogging up the Camino as they learn that the new papal nuncio in Ottawa is a Santiago boy who has twice walked the Camino as a post-ordination and post-consecration retreat.

Johnnie Walker's blog recently gave us a nice picture of a warm welcome in Santiago to a bishop-led group of pilgrims.

However, every account I have seen or heard suggests that contemporary bishops, usually office- and committee-bound bureaucrats, seem to be happy to escape their responsibilities and cheerfully carry their own packs and trudge along, unlike their mediaeval predecessors with their mounted retinues.