Pilgrimages
brazil

Two Hundred at the Start,
but One People in the End
This past July, 230 young people moved for 40 miles from Campos do Jordão to the Shrine of Nossa Senhora Aparecida. Four days of walking, testimonies, and prayers heading toward a fact that simply happens.

by Isabella Alberto

Camilo read Is It Possible to Live This Way? by chance. He looked for the name of that priest on the cover on the Internet and went on from that priest to look for the community of the Movement in his country, Brazil, telephoning around, searching for a contact. On July 15th, he set off with 230 other young people, university students and workers, from Campos do Jordão. They walked for 60 km (40 miles), to the Shrine of Nossa Senhora Aparecida. Halfway along the road, Camilo told his whole story, what had happened to him: how, from reading that book, he had begun to find he was different with his old friends. Now, there are 40 of them meeting for School of Community every week. His was one of the witnesses that accompanied the first pilgrimage of the young people of Brazil, coming from Manaus, Aracaju, Brasilia, São Paulo… from 13 different cities. There were also 19 youngsters from Paraguay, who had accepted the invitation from Fr. Aldo Trento, Cleuza, and Marcos.
The pilgrimage was led by Fr. Julián de la Morena, responsible of the university students in Brazil. This year, he had his heart set on an educative gesture for the summer vacation. He proposed the pilgrimage–four days of walking, daily Mass, silence, prayer, and song. They set off without knowing each other, and each one was walking on his own. They arrived as a people, united in kneeling before the statue of Our Lady. The food was provided by Cleuza and several friends of the “Trabalhadores Sem Terra” (landless workers) of São Paulo. Other people took care of the transport of backpacks on a truck; and still others set up the various camping areas where they spent their nights.

Moved hearts. The theme, as they traveled, was the Exercises of the Fraternity, From Faith, the Method, a work helped by daily assemblies and by people recounting their experiences. Jasmine, 40, is from Paraguay, almost the whole of her life spent in hatred for the regime that killed her father when she was still young. On coming into church one day, not knowing even why, she met Fr. Aldo. She began to visit and stay with him. Recently, one of the generals of the dictator Stroessner came back to Paraguay after years in exile. She went to meet him, accompanied by Fr. Aldo. “I no longer felt hatred for him, but love. I felt pain and sorrow, but not hatred. Only God can transform hatred into love,” she said during the journey to Aparecida. After her witness, the journey began again, with the recitation of the rosary. A girl from Salvador de Bahia who had joined the pilgrimage found herself all of a sudden praying for the thieves in the poor quarter where she lives. “I have never loved those people; they have always done harm to my life. I never thought I would be able to pray for them,” she told us the following day. “This is the work,” Fr. Julián said, “a person is surprised by a fact that happens.” This girl heard about Jasmine’s life and it moved her heart in a way she never thought possible.
Mile after mile, the tiredness of the journey brought out the best and worst in people, amid the sharing, often hard, of every detail. After reaching the shrine, Fr. Julián asked everyone to embrace the nearest person, asking forgiveness for everything, as required by the tradition of the Church, which “has no fear of errors.”