Summer Pilgrimages: El Camino de Santiago

Campus Life Update

As August concludes, the CatholicTech community is busy preparing campus for the arrival of our freshmen class and finishing up summer travels. Most notably, a group from CatholicTech recently finished a five-day pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago! Inspired by the recent journey of a parent from the high school summer program who completed the entire Camino Frances, our travelers made a spontaneous decision to answer the call of adventure, and they set off to experience this famed pilgrimage for themselves.

The Camino de Santiago (“the way of Saint James”) is a historic pilgrimage route from Medieval times. With options to begin from several different locations around Europe, each route ends at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, a charming town in the west of Spain that holds an impressive Gothic Cathedral dedicated to Saint James. The tradition of walking to Santiago as a spiritual journey started in the 9th century when the relics of the Apostle James, who evangelized Spain, were discovered there. Medieval Christianity valued pilgrimages as an aid to one’s relationship with God and representative of the larger pilgrimage of our life as we journey to Heaven. The walk to the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela became known as the Camino de Santiago, and thousands of pilgrims walked it in penitence or spiritual search every year.

Following the historic paths from the Middle Ages, the Camino continues to bring modern pilgrims through the peaceful countryside and beautiful towns of Spain. Pilgrims are directed by markers with a scallop shell pointing the way at any crossroads, and also by the many other hikers following the same journey. Partaking in this tradition of over a thousand years, our pilgrims prayed and wondered as they brought personal intentions and the future of CatholicTech along the paths to Saint James.

The symbol of the Camino is a scallop shell; historically, pilgrims carried a shell home from the extended pilgrimage’s end at the ocean as proof of completion. Now, most pilgrims end their journey at Santiago, but after arriving in Santiago there remains a route available to walk to finish one’s pilgrimage at the sea at Finister. Some of CatholicTech’s community members are walking this route this weekend to collect their own scallop shells from this journey.  

We are grateful for this opportunity to experience the historic Christian tradition of walking the Camino de Santiago. CatholicTech’s location near Rome offers our students many opportunities to explore Europe, immersing themselves in the history of Western Civilization and the traditions of our Catholic Church. Through these experiences, students come to know themselves and humanity better. This understanding helps them to better discern their place among humanity and how they are called to serve others as saints, scholars, and scientists.