Author: SY

I’d be a very wealthy person if I got a cent every time some one asks me, “Why do you walk the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela when you aren’t a Catholic?”

My usual answer is, “Because Santiago wasn’t a Catholic either, or a protestant, or an orthodox, or a Baptist, or a {insert favourite Christian label here}.”

Santiago, Saint James the Greater in the bible, was one of the very first followers of Jesus. He heard the Good News and it turned his life around. He left behind everything he once held dear and started to spread the Word. The simple truth that “you are a beloved child of God”. Or, as I often put it, at the very heart of my faith is this: God loves us, everything else is secondary.

Ok, I managed to start off on a tangent at the very beginning of this blog post! The reason I started to write it, is that the whole theme of ecumenism ties in with the publication of archbishop Julián’s pastoral letter for the next Holy Year 2021 (source: https://anosantocompostelano.org/carta-pastoral-en-el-ano-santo-compostelano-2021-de-mons-julian-barrio-barrio/)

It is a lengthy document, but I would like to draw your attention to this paragraph which made my heart sing with gratitude:

“The Catholic Church also becomes a pilgrim with other Churches and ecclesial communities so that the unity of all Christians becomes effective. The body of Christ cannot be divided. Therefore, ecumenism is a sacred duty for us. This takes us beyond manifestations of good intentions, also requiring concrete initiatives. Thus, in our city of Santiago, they share the same sacred space, a small church, Anglicans, Orthodox and Protestants, so that the same Spirit that makes us Christians, helps us to live communion among us by pilgrimage towards unity.”

The significance of this statement can’t be overstated. It is of historic importance.

The acknowledgment that we all form the body of Christ, no matter from which church background we come from and the firm commitment to a common pilgrimage towards unity put such a joyful smile onto my face!

So, thank you Don Julián for all the support you have given the Anglican Camino Chaplaincy https://egeria.house/anglican-camino-chaplaincy-2020/ in the past and let’s continue a pilgrimage towards Christian unity. We have already come a long Camino, but there is still a long way to go until the sad division of churches is a thing of the past.

Next step ???

Due to Covid-19 there will be no Camino Chaplaincy this year here in Santiago. Please check for online events here: https://egeria.house/the-camino-chaplaincy-goes-online/

Summary of activity in the first two seasons:

2018 – The Chaplaincy started as a pilot. With the help of 6 priests and 5 lay volunteers the Chaplaincy was launched and from 13 May – 24 June, and 2 September – 21 October, 27 church services were held.

2019 – 7 priests and 6 lay volunteers provided 39 church services continuously from 12 May – 9 October. The average attendance at services increased by 29% compared to the previous year.

Numbers don’t tell the whole story:

• The personal contact with pilgrims and visitors to Santiago. The Eucharists and shared meals which were like Nations United.
• The joy in the faces of the sick pilgrim we visited in their albergue or at their hospital bed providing both practical and spiritual support.
• The peace of mind of those who were supported by our chaplains to talk about difficult issues.
• The laughter and the prayers shared among the chaplaincy team.
• The excellent ecumenical relations we have formed in Santiago, founded on our common belief that we are all here to serve pilgrims.

Our plans for 2020:

As in previous years we plan to provide midweek and Sunday services. We will also welcome pilgrims for coffee, cookies and chats during our Open House at the Ecumenical Centre, as well as hosting shared meals. Most importantly, we will continue to provide and develop our pastoral services and the practical help we can offer pilgrims.

We depend on donations to fund these activities and although individually they don’t cost a lot, over time the costs add up. As our ministry to pilgrims and visitors here in Santiago de Compostela grows, so will the costs!

Please consider supporting us:

If you are considering supporting the Chaplaincy here are several ways you can help – only one of the suggestions costs money:

Pray for us, especially during the winter, as we do the preparation work for next season. Please also pray for the volunteers, both priests and lay people, who will serve during the Chaplaincy season in 2020.

Spread the word about us, and tell everybody that we are here! Word of mouth, either online or in real life, is the best way to make this ministry widely known.

Sign-up to our Newsletter, and stay informed about our activities. You can either use the form in the sidebar of this blog or this >>>direct link<<<.

Tell your friends. Please forward this link http://eepurl.com/gJyQOj to anybody you think might be interested in what we do, so that they also can sign up to our newsletter.

Facebook. We also have a Facebook Page here: https://www.facebook.com/CaminoChaplaincyCoE/ where we regularly post information about events during the season – please ‘like’ it and share it.

Donations: As there are no running costs this year, we are not asking for donations anymore. All donations that have been already received have been transferred to our UK bank account with the Diocese in Europe, Church of England and are ready to be used when the Camino re-opens and pilgrims will need our help.

Volunteering with the Anglican Camino Chaplaincy in 2021:

2021 is the next Holy Year which will bring many more pilgrims than usual to Santiago. We will need all of the help we can get. If you are an ordained priest in a Church in full communion with the Church of England and interested in helping, please email our lead Chaplain Fr Bob for further information: frbobbates@gmail.com.

We might have, limited, need for lay volunteers, in that case, please contact me here: https://egeria.house/contact/.

And finally:

Buen Camino and prayers from Santiago. If you have any questions or suggestions please leave them in a comment or contact me directly via https://egeria.house/contact.

When you start a new ministry, such as our Anglican Camino Chaplaincy here in Santiago, everyone asks the same questions: Is there enough interest in this kind of ministry? Is it worthwhile? Are there enough pilgrims that might be interested in this? Or, better said: ‘How many Protestants are actually on the Camino de Santiago and in Santiago de Compostela itself?

From the very beginning it became clear that the Anglican Camino Chaplaincy is indeed a ‘catch-all’for pilgrims from a variety of different church backgrounds and countries. It is not a ‘The Brits Abroad’ chaplaincy! A typical Sunday congregation can be easily contain people from 6 different countries and 6 different home churches. I remember having worshipped with and led worship for: Lutherans from Sweden, Protestants from Germany, Anglicans from South Africa, United Church of Christ members from the USA and, yes, Church of England members from the UK and many, many more.  We will only see most of these worshippers once, and they will be on their way to their homes in a day or two. Apart of the ones that volunteer here for a longer period of time or live here. We are delighted to see them over and over again!

Over the last two years it became very clear that this is a multi-national and multi-denominational ministry that just happens to be led by the Church of England but unites people from all kind of backgrounds and countries. The chaplaincy is under the auspices of the Church of England, which has managed pastoral services to English-speakers in Spain for almost 200 years and is under the supervision of their Bishop in Europe and its suffragan bishop, +David Hamid, that is directly responsible for this project.  And just for the record, while our main focus is on ministering to pilgrims, visitors to the city and residents of it are just as welcome! The door is open for everyone!

A few bits of clarification:

First, the terms Protestant and Protestant Churches are used in this blog post to encompass everybody, including, but not limited to, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Old Catholics, Baptists, United Church of Christ, basically all Christians that are NOT Roman-Catholic NOR Orthodox.  My heartfelt apologies to those of my fellow Anglicans who don’t like to be called Protestants btw 😉

Also, it is difficult to say which percentage of pilgrims comes from a certain church background AND still practice their faith in that same church environment.

For example, Spain is a predominantly Catholic country, but not everybody that self-identifies as Catholic actually ever darkens the door of a church here 😉

On the other hand, countries like Canada, the USA and South Korea might send more pilgrims, proportionally, as they heard about the Camino first in a ‘religious’ context and are practising members of their respective churches.

As far as I know (please correct me if you have more information!) only one of the main starting points collects information about the church affiliation of pilgrims and that is Roncesvalles on the Camino Francés.

The problem is that I can’t find these statistics anywhere. Apparently they go into a black hole in the Government of Navarra. If somebody could take a spaceship there and dig them out, that would be very much appreciated!

But even if that would happen one day, only 5,541 pilgrims (1,69% of all pilgrims in 2018!) started their Camino in Roncesvalles that year. So, that information would have to be extrapolated with a huge grain of salt as the total number of pilgrims registered by the Pilgrim’s Office here in Santiago in 2018 was: 327,378!

A pilgrim friend of mine had a better idea.  He looked at the top 15 groups of pilgrims by country in 2018 as registered by the Pilgrim’s Office here in Santiago and then applied their ‘home country’ denominational ratio to them.

For example: with 144,141 Spanish pilgrims arriving in Santiago in 2018, and because Spain is a predominantly Roman-Catholic country, only 1.2% of the population have declared themselves being protestants in the last census. Which gives us a guesstimate of 1,729 Spanish protestant pilgrims on the Camino.

In my own experience, I would say the number is in reality far lower as a lot of Spanish protestants belong to non-denominational Churches which really haven’t developed a tradition of pilgrimage to Santiago – yet. In fact, I have only met perhaps two handful of Spanish Protestant pilgrims over the last twenty years…  And, in any case, they wouldn’t be necessarily be interested in an English language ministry.

The next biggest (by country) group of pilgrims comes from Italy with around 216 Protestant pilgrims.  Again, Italy is a predominantly Catholic country.

After that we have Germany, which does indeed have a higher percentage of Protestants and so we got likely 6,451 Protestant pilgrims from Germany in 2018.

Next in line is the USA, the first predominantly English-speaking country in the list, with a likelihood of having contributed 8,262 pilgrims.

And so it goes on, if you would like to see the rest of the numbers, please download the PDF from the link at the bottom of this blog post.

And if we look now at the top English-speaking countries from which the pilgrims come from, the total numbers get even smaller:

• USA – likely 8,262 Protestants from different churches
• Great Britain – likely 1,990 Protestants from different churches
• Ireland – likely 943 Protestants from different churches

To cut a long story short and taking in account the 15 Top countries where pilgrims come from we get a guestimate of 28,271 Protestant pilgrims in this Top 15 group. And the total of all pilgrims from these Top 15 countries is 286,934.

Summary: As a careful guesstimate, between 10% and 15% of all pilgrims that arrived 2018 in Santiago, and who went to the Pilgrim’s Office for their Compostelas, were Protestants.

Which gives us the following numbers:

• Pilgrims in total- 327,378
• Possibly Protestant Pilgrims: ~32,737 and ~49,105

And if we take into account the number of pilgrims who come from English-speaking countries or a country where English is widely spoken as a second language, the number of pilgrims that might be interested in an English language service offering drops again.

So, my personal guesstimate is that around 15,000 and 20,000 Protestants from a variety of different churches AND that speak English as a first or second language, arrived last year in Santiago.

So, yes, having a Anglican Camino Chaplaincy here in Santiago de Compostela makes an awful lot of sense!

Any thoughts or questions? Please leave them in a comment below! Many Muchas Gracias and Buen Camino wherever you are Peregrin@s!

And if you want to have a look at the original numbers my pilgrim friend crunched and which sources of information he used– and he emphasizes that this is a methodologically imperfect exercise, have a look at this >>>PDF File<<< Click to download …

The Rev Alasdair Kay (Church of England) served as a Camino Chaplain both in 2018 and 2019, here a short report by him about his experience:

I walked my first Camino in 2016 whilst on a sabbatical as a Parish Priest. I began in St Jean Pied de Port and walked to Santiago de Compostela and then on to Finesterre and Muxia. Since then I have walked another serving as an Anglican Chaplain on the Camino.

The Camino is a life changing journey on several levels. It can be a time of deep reflection where pilgrims grow deeper in their spirituality and often Pilgrims talk of times of encountering the divine in solitude and silence. Every Camino has had its times of real physical exertion and pain. This pain can be cathartic as it releases stress and helps people to access inner emotional and spiritual pain that is carried in life. The Camino is a place of healing and the healing happens at a deep level in a very mystical way.

People walk the Camino for a host of reasons. Our role as Chaplains on the Camino is to serve those Pilgrims who are looking for spiritual support in their Camino. Some pilgrims like to share with others and want to talk to someone about their inner life and this is where the Anglican Camino Chaplaincy comes in. Whilst walking the Camino as a Pilgrim we have many spiritual conversations with people on a whole host of subjects, faith, death, pain, relationships, prayer, the sacraments, and especially blisters and tendonitis.

Our role as Chaplains is to come alongside those who want to form this ongoing connection and often we gather as Pilgrims in what is called “Camino families” groups of Pilgrims who become friends as they walk on the Camino. We then as we walk share together our joys and pains in the inner and outer journey of the Camino. This often happens around the daily pilgrims meal at the end of the day eating and drinking together.

This year I walked the Camino Portuguese from Porto to Santiago and made 12 good friends who I still stay in contact with. Pilgrims from Malaysia, USA, Chile, Holland, Germany, Brazil, and Denmark, together we formed a Camino family and it was a real joy to all finish our pilgrimage together celebrating a special Eucharist at Santa Susanna Church in Santiago.

Ultreia

Br Alasdair CFC (Community of Francis and Clare)