The Latin Mass Society’s annual walking pilgrimage to the National Shrine of Walsingham
took place over August Bank Holiday weekend. The fourth consecutive year of this event
saw 90 people (a 25% per cent rise on last year) undertaking the three-day journey on foot
to ‘England’s Nazareth’. The intention of the 55-mile walk, which started in the cathedral city
of Ely in Cambridgeshire, was the conversion of England. Pilgrims slept in tents or on the
floors of school and village halls along the way and clearly many found it more challenging
than they had expected, but all managed to reach the Shrine in time for Solemn Mass in the
Extraordinary Form on the afternoon of Sunday, 25 August.
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The pilgrimage procession in Walsingham High Street |
Four priests accompanied the pilgrimage. Fr Bede Rowe of Clifton Diocese, presently
based at Chavagnes College in France, was chaplain of the pilgrimage. He was joined by Fr
Thomas Crean, OP, of Holy Cross Priory, Leicester, Fr John Cahill of Northampton Diocese,
and Fr Michael Rowe (no kin) from Australia. In addition, three English seminarians from
the Fraternity of St Peter joined the event as well as member of the Dominican community
at Blackfriars, Cambridge. Traditional Solemn Mass was celebrated every day of the
pilgrimage, most notably at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, a fifteenth century moated manor
house and former recusant home, still lived in by the Bedingfeld family.
LMS General Manager, Mike Lord, said: ‘By common consent, this has been the best
year for this
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The pilgrimage concludes by the Abbey ruins in Walsingham |
pilgrimage so far. The overwhelming majority of walkers are young families
and young people, showing the continuing vitality of the Traditional Mass and Faith.
Many are encountering the Old Rite for the first time and have found the experience of
the traditional spirituality of the Roman Rite and the spiritual and physical discipline of a
walking pilgrimage an inspiring and transforming experience. Our entrance into Walsingham
itself was memorable. On other public pilgrimages organised by the LMS, it is common to
encounter hostility in the street, but as we approached the gates of the Abbey grounds to the
former site of Lady Richeldis’s Holy House, the response of bystanders was very positive,
even awed.’
The LMS plans to release a short film documentary in the early autumn about this year’s
pilgrimage to inform and inspire others to join them for next year’s event.