How one man is preparing pilgrims for the unexpected

Michie · May 10, 2024

Will Peterson, center, walks the 5-mile Way of St. Joseph in South Bend, Ind., May 1, 2021. Peterson is the founder and president of Modern Catholic Pilgrim, a non-profit based in St. Paul, Minn., dedicated to walking pilgrimages and hospitality in the Catholic tradition. Modern Catholic Pilgrim has partnered with the National Eucharistic Revival to organize the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, which launches May 17 with groups walking four routes in the U.S. that converge July 17 in Indianapolis for the five-day National Eucharistic Congress. (OSV News photo/Today's Catholic from the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend)

Next week, pilgrims will begin a 6,500-mile journey, walking across the country with the Eucharist as part of the three-year National Eucharistic Revival.

Organizers say that it will be the largest Eucharistic pilgrimage in history, with four routes covering the entire continental United States as the groups of pilgrims journey toward Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress.

Groups of “perpetual pilgrims” will journey the entire route. Along the way, they will invite over an estimated 100,000 outsiders to join them for part of the journey. And it all begins May 18.

With a pilgrimage this size, there are many logistical concerns. Since July 2022, Will Peterson, the director of Modern Catholic Pilgrim, has been developing a plan — and countless backup plans — to ensure the pilgrimage’s success.

“There’s a sense of fluidity to it,” Peterson told Our Sunday Visitor. “Especially during the pilgrimage, there are going to be instances where we have to move this event up half an hour because they arrived early or there is a funeral at a parish, and now we need to actually go to a different church and be there. We have been working hard to make sure that those responses all get put in place, but then we recognized that we’re not going to have a static schedule at any point for the sixty days along the four routes.”

Subsidiarity in action

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