Planning a School Student Pilgrimage

Planning a School Student Pilgrimage - The St Edward's Way

Stuart Keene • May 4, 2023

The St. Edward’s way in Dorset is a 32-mile route that connects two significant locations, Lady St. Mary Church in Wareham to Shaftesbury Abbey Museum. The former was the location of St Edward’s burial in 972 and the latter his resting place from 979 after his remains were translated, and Shaftesbury became a centre of pilgrimage. Our School was named after St. Edward, the teenage king whose martyrdom has a strong local connection, and the newly commissioned route presented the perfect opportunity for a school pilgrimage.

We assembled a small group of staff in school to consider both the logistics and the rationale and to establish the links to local communities needed to complete the full route. There are fantastic online resources from a variety of websites which includes; routes, descriptions, historical background and posts from people recently completing sections. From these resources, and with the support of Shaftesbury Abbey Museum, we decided to walk a trial section of 10 miles from Shillingstone to Shaftesbury in July 2022. From this event, we realised that students were capable of walking the route without the need to purchase additional walking clothing or footwear provided that conditions were reasonable, (and that students from Years 7-12 walked at an average of 2mph with breaks and accounting for hills!). Our trial event highlighted the lack of public toilets in rural settings and this is something we would need to plan for.

St Edward’s began as a Catholic school, and is now a relatively rare joint-Church school, supported by the Dioceses of Plymouth and Salisbury. The 60^th anniversary of the foundation of our school falls in 2023 and we wanted to include the pilgrimage as one of the school events used to mark this milestone. We decided to include students from each year group and to complete the 32 miles in 4 stages, one each month through April to July in order to benefit from good weather, and to provide a regular reminder to our school community that we were progressing towards our anniversary in September. A member of our chaplaincy team will be accompanying each stage of the pilgrim route, to ensure that the spiritual dimension of pilgrimage is sustained throughout the journey. It was the chaplaincy team that brought the unifying elements of the four stages together with prayer and also in the creation of the pilgrim’s staff. One of our chaplaincy team created the staff which has an engraved image specific to each of the start and end locations so that students can know what part of the pilgrimage journey they played, unifying the the four discrete groups to this shared experience.

So far we have completed one of the four sections, the first being walked by Year 7 student leaders who are representatives of each of our tutor groups. Each stage involves a different group of student leaders so that the majority of year groups will have representatives that have completed the pilgrimage. Building links to the local communities along the way has resulted in significant interest from the local villages and parishes, with opportunities to meet clergy and to use facilities which would otherwise not have been an option without the creation of these links. This in turn has raised the profile of the pilgrimage route and also our school as our students have been great ambassadors. Key to this is the students knowing why it is that we are completing this pilgrimage and how their small part links to our mission statement of ‘May we be one’.

One other important element is checking the route and being confident to lead a group. As I live in a village that falls upon the route and have previous experience training expedition groups I was able to walk much of the route weeks in advance, this enabled me to check the suitability of the trail and to ensure there were access opportunities to enable the minibus to collect a student in the event of a minor injury. Knowledge of the route enabled me to liaise with parents of students that have additional learning needs to ensure that the challenge of the day was understood and so that we planned for their needs to ensure the experience was inclusive.

We look forward to completing the remaining stages and we are considering completing one section in September as a staff and Governor’s group to share the experience more widely. The pilgrim’s staff will be on display in our Legacy Chapel which holds the school archive, and I hope that we can use the pilgrim staff and complete the pilgrimage, perhaps in different ways, in the coming years, always carrying this unifying symbol.

Stuart Keene, Assistant Headteacher and Pilgrimage Leader

The photos taken by Stuart Keene and are not subject to copyright.

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The Pilgrimage of Hope is open for day pilgrims to register!

By Phil McCarthy • June 5, 2025

Registration for day pilgrims to join the 2025 National Walking Pilgrimage of Hope is now open! The Pilgrimage of Hope is a national walking pilgrimage with four main Ways converging at the Cathedral of St Barnabas, Nottingham, on Saturday 13th September 2025, for shared prayer and celebration. The four main Ways start at the Catholic cathedrals in Cardiff, Leeds, Norwich and Southwark, London, and will bless our nations with a Sign of the Cross and with the Gospels. The routes are named after the Evangelists and use established hiking routes and are off road as much as possible. A small group of 4-6 'perpetual pilgrims' will walk the full distance of each Way, and up to 20 day pilgrims will be able to join for day stages. Stretches which are suitable for wheelchairs and buggies have been be identified. There will be opportunities for non-walkers to provide enroute support, hospitality and prayer. There are possible feeder routes to the four main Ways from all the other Catholic cathedrals of England & Wales for keen long-distance walkers, so people from every diocese can organise their own pilgrimages. More information and registration Information about how to support the Pilgrimage with prayer and hospitality and how to register to walk stages as day pilgrims can be found here . Wishing you every blessing and joy during this Jubilee year, as we strive to become ‘pilgrims of hope’. I hope to meet many of you in Nottingham on 13th September. Buen camino! Phil McCarthy, Project Lead

Walking in the steps of London's saints

By Colette Joyce /ICN • June 4, 2025

A group of 25 pilgrims gathered at the English Martyrs Church by Tower Hill last Thursday morning, Feast of the Ascension, to take part in the Westminster Way Jubilee Year Pilgrimage, led by Westminster Diocese Justice and Peace Co-Ordinator Colette Joyce. At each station we prayed and reflected on saints connected to London and the inspiration they continue to be for us today: St John Houghton and the Carthusian Martyrs of the Reformation, the missionary St Augustine of Canterbury, St Anne Line who sheltered priests and held secret Masses in her home during the Elizabethan persecution, St Erconwald, St Ethelburga and St Etheldreda. We remembered the scholars of the 7th century who brought learning and education to both men and women, and St John Henry Newman whose own spiritual journey of conversion and prophetic sense of the nature of the Church had a profound influence on the 20th century leading up to the Second Vatican Council. From the church we walked past the Tower of London, where so many Catholic martyrs met their fate during the Reformation, stopping to pray at the site of the scaffold where St John Fisher and St Thomas More were executed. Our next stop was Mary Moorfields, the only Catholic Church in the City of London. From here we walked to the Charterhouse, once a Carthusian priory and home to the first martyrs of the Reformation. The Prior, St John Houghton and Companions were hung and quartered for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy. Watching from his cell window, St Thomas More witnessed the monks being dragged on hurdles from the Tower of London on 4 May 1535. He is said to have admired their courage and faith as they went to their deaths, viewing them as "Cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms going to their marriage." From here we walked to St Etheldreda's, Ely Place, one of the oldest Catholic churches in London. Built around 1250 as the town chapel for the bishops of Ely. After the Reformation It had several owners . For a a time it was used by the Spanish ambassador as a private chapel. During Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, it was used as a prison and a hospital. The Rosminians bought St Etheldreda's in 1874 and have restored it beautifully. As we were walking during Laudato Si' Week, pilgrim leader Colette Joyce invited pilgrims to reflect on the flora and fauna of London on our way. London is a surprisingly green city, blessed with around twenty percent tree coverage - which makes it technically a forest! We are especially grateful to the Victorians who planted the ubiquitous London Plane trees which can be found in streets and parks all over the city, while there are more than 400 other species of tree to discover. "The entire material universe speaks of God's love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God… contemplation of creation allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us." (Laudato Si', 84-85) After a stop at Corpus Christi Church in Covent Garden - where former parish priest Fr Francis Stanfield wrote Sweet Sacrament Divine and Mgr Ronald Knox preached his famous homilies on the Blessed Sacrament - we made our way down the Strand, past Traflagar Square, through Whitehall, down to Westminster Cathedral. On our arrival, we weary walkers were greeted by the Cathedral Dean, Fr Slawomir Witoń. We ended our pilgrimage with prayers in the Martyrs Chapel and a reflection from Fr Slawomir on the life and witness of St John Southworth, patron saint of clergy in the Diocese of Westminster. The pilgrims received the final stamp in their Pilgrim Passports and a blessing before returning home. Colette Joyce, Westminster Diocese Justice and Peace Co-Ordinator Read more about the Westminster Way: https://westminsterjusticeandpeace.org/2025/06/02/walking-the-westminster-way/ This article was first published on Independent Catholic News: Independent Catholic News Image: Pilgrims at Westminster Cathedral (Archdiocese of Westminster)

The Psychology of Pilgrimage

By Phil McCarthy • June 3, 2025

In this podcast I discuss the psychology of pilgrimage, especially as it relates to visiting First World War battlefields and cemeteries.

Walking the St Wulstan Way

By Peter Chisholm • May 31, 2025

Pilgrims joined Fr Gerry Walsh tracing St Wulstan’s life and legacy, from Worcester Cathedral to Clifton Cathedral as part of the Catholic Church’s Year of Jubilee, “Pilgrims of Hope” celebrations. Participants explored their faith while journeying through stunning landscapes and historic locations.