They were the pilgrims with the two rings, each wearing their own wedding band next to the wedding band of their recently deceased spouse—each, the widow and widower, walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago separately.
As pilgrims met, passed each other, fell behind and caught up again, many heard and spread the tale of “the pilgrim with two rings.”
One evening at an albergue, as the lodging houses and hostels along the Camino are called, meeting pilgrims they had not met before, the widow and the widower each noticed the other’s hand. After some 400 miles of walking the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, they had both finally met—“the pilgrim with two rings.”
They walked together for the rest of the journey.
Katherine O’Flynn, F.C.J., met them at the pilgrims reception office in Santiago de Compostela.
Pilgrims take the 500-mile Camino de Santiago seeking insight through the journey or simply wanting time to reflect and encounter God. With Sister Katherine, they are able to talk through their experience.
“They came to talk about their future,” Sister Katherine, a member of the Faithful Companions of Jesus and part of the Camino Companions ministry, said. Not a future together—”They knew that wasn’t right for them because they had families; they had commitments”—but a future that reflected the impact of the Camino on their lives.
“They wanted to just show how much they appreciated being given the companionship and the support of each other,” Sister Katherine said.
Like so many other pilgrims—over 200,000 so far this year—they had taken to the 500-mile pilgrimage route across Spain pondering deeply personal questions, seeking insight through the journey or simply wanting time to reflect and encounter God. With Sister Katherine, they were able to talk through their experience and its unique lessons before leaving the sanctuary of St. James and making the return to everyday life.
Sister Katherine’s ministry is part of the Acogida Cristiana en el Camino (Christian Welcome on the Way), an effort by the Catholic Church to preserve the deepest religious meaning of the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James in English, and help pilgrims in their encounter with God. The Way of St. James is a collection of the medieval routes through northern France and Spain to the cathedral in the city of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, where tradition holds the apostle St. James the Great is buried.
It was among the most frequented sanctuaries in Europe from the 11th century until the early 19th century. Eventually, the original paths, including old Roman roads friendly to foot traffic, were paved over to make way for automobiles.
Christian Welcome on the Way ia an effort to preserve the deepest religious meaning of the Camino de Santiago and help pilgrims in their encounter with God.
Beginning in the 1960s, the Santiago pilgrimage and its route underwent a revival that continues to this day. In the 1980s, the footpath was re-established, and basic, cheap accommodations—many run by volunteers—were built through grassroots efforts in collaboration with both the Spanish government and the Catholic Church. Now, for over a decade, some 300,000 pilgrims a year have reached Santiago de Compostela by foot, horse or bicycle. Many Americans set out in late summer when the intensity of the Spanish sun wanes and temperatures cool.
The connection between the Catholic Church and the Camino has never been broken, but the modern version of the pilgrimage to St. James’s tomb inevitably incorporates aspects related to the more secular society the Camino wanders through. To begin with, fewer and fewer pilgrims identify as Christians or have explicitly religious motives for walking the Way.
Spain’s national and regional tourist offices promote the Camino, and Spanish businesses strive to associate their products with it. The Spanish beer Estrella Galicia even introduced a special brew, Estrellas del Camino, in 2021 in honor of the Jacobean Holy Year, which is any year in which the feast of St. James, July 25, falls on a Sunday.
Into this milieu have stepped Sister Katherine and other religious, priests and lay people who hope to bring a modern Catholic ministry to a modern Camino.
“A.C.C. is not an instituted organization, but a group of people who share a vision and effort,” the website of the pilgrims office at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela explains.
Rather it is a “commitment to make Christ present and lead to an encounter with him, because we firmly believe that only he truly satisfies hunger and thirst, truly heals the wounds of the soul, and alleviates the weariness of the heart of man.”
The effort includes religious, priests and lay volunteers who manage albergues and administer churches along the Camino.
“We offer a welcome to anybody who’s been on the Camino. To all pilgrims. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Catholic, some Christian denomination, any of the other faiths or no faith.”
“Because of so much interest, there’s a risk of the Camino becoming more like a tourist activity than a spiritual pilgrimage,” the Rev. Jaume Alemany explained. “A number of people got together years ago and we are striving exactly for this, to return the spirit of pilgrimage to the Camino, rescuing it from tourism,” Father Jaume said.
Over the last 30 years, Father Jaume has divided his time between parish and prison ministry in Palma de Mallorca, far from the Camino, and his ministry with the Albergue de Santa Maria de Azogue, 57 kilometers from Santiago. The albergue is run by volunteers and is supported by donations from guests. From those who can afford it, volunteer hosts ask 12 euros for a night’s stay, but everyone is welcome regardless of how much they can afford to pay.
Father Alemany was involved in the initial efforts almost a decade ago to organize a more deliberate church presence along the Camino. He explained that A.C.C. consolidated around 2015 and was initially organized as a legally registered nonprofit, but its members found that status involved too much bureaucracy.
It continues to operate today through a less formal association. Father Alemany offers training in Mallorca for hospitallers—volunteers at albergues—during the pilgrimage’s off-season. There are a dozen albergues associated with the Acogida Cristiana en el Camino and other churches along the route that make an effort to remain open throughout the year, so pilgrims can pray or rest.
In Santiago de Compostela, Sister Katherine and other volunteers from various countries attend to pilgrims at the pilgrim’s reception office run by the cathedral. It is from there that the compostela—the traditional official certification of having reached the sanctuary—is issued.
The connection between the church and the Camino has never been broken, but the modern version inevitably incorporates aspects related to the more secular society the Camino wanders through.
“We offer a welcome to anybody who’s been on the Camino,” Sister Katherine said. “To all pilgrims, irrespective of faith. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Catholic, some Christian denomination, any of the other faiths or no faith.
“We see our outreach as welcoming them, being there to listen to their stories and helping them if they’re open and wish to kind of look at what the Camino has been about for them.” Discussions with these volunteers can help pilgrims understand if the experience is calling them to any significant changes in their lives or help them interpret their experiences on the Way.
A psychologist and trained spiritual director, Sister Katherine walked the Camino herself in 2010. She realized then that there were many people “who had a story to tell and were very happy to have somebody listen.”
“Sometimes I felt that the story needed a bit more unpacking, a bit more time, and that there could be value to having a place where that was possible,” she said.
In 2015, she found herself in transition out of a leadership role in her religious community and proposed a new ministry, the Camino Companions. Providentially, her arrival in Santiago coincided with the beginnings of the A.C.C., and she and her sisters were soon offered space in the pilgrims reception office.
“We use the line from T. S. Elliot: ‘We had the experience, but missed the meaning,’ (from his poem “Four Quartets”), and we changed it a little bit,” she said. “Had the experience? Want to deepen the meaning?” is the tagline Camino Companions use.
Sister Katherine finds that when pilgrims arrive at Santiago, they can have a number of reactions, from elation or disappointment to sometimes even anger. For some pilgrims, the Camino is everything they had hoped for, but others are disappointed by the experience.
The reasons for such letdowns can vary. Some suffer physical injuries while on the Camino; others never find the “Camino family” they hoped to meet or never encounter the religious experience they expected. Some feel the arrival in Santiago is anti-climactic.
Other pilgrims have had experiences on the Camino they never expected. Sister Katherine recalled one woman who spent most of her Way assisting an ad hoc team of other pilgrims who volunteered themselves to push—and when the road warranted it, to carry—a disabled pilgrim attempting the Camino in a wheelchair.
She and the other sisters make themselves available to help pilgrims find the personal lesson or the hand of God in both the good, the bad and the “meh” of the Camino.
In a Europe in need of a new evangelization, where tourism and pilgrimage intersect, a Christian welcome on the Camino means helping to make the journey a place of encounter with Christ.
“The church has this treasure of St. James the Apostle, and it’s a Christian heritage, but it’s also universal,” Father Alemany said. “People who might not otherwise get to know Jesus can get to know him through the Camino.”
