STEERING GROUP

Gerard was asked to take a lead with local Hallam Diocesan pilgrimages in the Year of Jubileee 2025 and this led to involvement with the National Jubilee Pilgrimage of Hope, St Mark’s Way (North). This brought the benefits of inter-diocesan, parish and ecumenical dialogue. All of which can continue to be strengthened in 2026.

He believes that pilgrimage is essentially about ‘walking prayer’. Each and every step is a prayer with purpose. All who supported the Evangelist entitled Pilgrim Ways in 2025, in any way, were ‘walking in prayer’ on that Pilgrimage.

The evidence of peoples’ ‘lives of faith’ in our local histories and landscapes, are somewhat ‘hidden in plain sight’. We just need to retrieve and draw strength from them.

The National Jubilee Pilgrimage of Hope re-invigorated our Pilgrimage traditions from the past and have created new ones. We can build on this in 2026 and into the future.

Following his retirement from senior leadership roles in commercial businesses, and then as Chief Operating Officer for the Diocese of Leeds, Ian commenced a new ‘career’ of Pilgrimage walking.

The inspiration arose during a family holiday in Northern Spain and seeing dozens of pilgrims walking along the routes of the Camino de Santiago.  He was soon joining the many thousands of pilgrims walking the main Camino Francés from St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela, a distance of around 800 kilometres, and then on to Finisterre along with many other pilgrims.

Since then, Ian has walked, solo, many other pilgrim routes including the ‘Way of St Francis’ and the ‘Way of St Benedict’ in Italy.

Ian was one of a group of five pilgrims to walk the first ‘St Wilfrid’s Way’ in Yorkshire and has continued to walk this route each of the past ten years.  Ian is taking over the responsibility for leading this pilgrimage in October 2026. Ian was the lead on the St Mark’s Way being the Northern Route of the Pilgrimage of Hope event that concluding in Nottingham in 2025.

Alison Gelder began her pilgrim journey by joining Student (now Pilgrim) Cross in 1976. Since then she has become a Catholic, married, given birth to three daughters (current grandchildren count is seven), worked for BT and Housing Justice, returned to university to study theology and become a church and social researcher.

In 2010, taking a sabbatical from Housing Justice, Alison and her husband, Ian Smith embarked on a ‘once in a lifetime’ pilgrimage on foot from Walsingham to Santiago de Compostela, via Vezelay in northern Burgundy, re-tracing the 1946 peace pilgrimage. However, the Camino turned out to be addictive and so they have made several subsequent pilgrimages to Santiago, and, since Alison’s retirement from full time work in 2017, they have walked from London to Rome twice. 

Alison continues to be involved with Pilgrim Cross and in 2025 shared in the planning and leadership of St John’s Way, the southern route of the national jubilee pilgrimage of hope. Meanwhile, at home in Elephant and Castle, Alison is part of an ecumenical group encouraging pilgrimage in and around Southwark.

Father Simon Gillespie, a Catholic priest of Nottingham Diocese, is Private Secretary to the Bishop of Nottingham and Episcopal Vicar for Catholic Education.  

Fr Simon has previously worked in parishes in Southwell and Calverton, Stamford, Leicester, Mansfield, and Lincoln.   As well as episcopal duties, Fr Simon helps to organise the annual Diocesan Lourdes Pilgrimage, is an ecclesiastical judge of the Nottingham Tribunal, edits the Diocesan Yearbook and Ordo, and compiles the diocesan pastoral statistics.

Prior to his ordination in 2012, Simon worked in the legal profession, specialising in property law. He completed a licence in Canon Law through the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, adding to a Civil Law degree from Manchester and a Divinity degree from London. Simon studied for the priesthood in Saint Alban's seminary, Valladolid and Allen Hall seminary, London, together with a year at the Institute of Saint Anselm, Kent.

In his spare time, he is Scout Group Chairman for a Catholic Scout Group in Nottingham, which affords a bit of time to get out and about, and even manage some walking!

Kinga Kosterska is the administrator for the Mission Directorate at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. She has worked for the Directorate since 2021.

During the course of her career, she has project managed many government workforce development contracts.  She now uses her talents to be a bridge between the Hearts in Search of God initiative and the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, hopefully to the benefit of both.

Pat worked in the telecommunications industry for many years in technical, marketing and managerial roles.

Encouraged by a meeting in The Lamb pub in London, he made in 2018 a pilgrimage along the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome. In 2022 he made the return journey, starting in Rome.

Pat led the Eastern arm of the 2025 Jubilee Walking Pilgrimage of Hope, encountering warm hospitality in sometimes bleak East Anglian and Lincolnshire countryside.

He looks forward to new vistas on the road less travelled and to new and re-newed acquaintance.

Phil is the founder of the Hearts in Search of God project and currently chairs the Steering Group. 

He was a GP in Bristol for many years and held many leadership roles within the NHS. 

In 2015 he took up the role of CEO of Caritas Social Action Network, the domestic social action agency of the Catholic Church in England & Wales. 

He has been interested in long distance walking for many years and in 2008 he walked from Canterbury to Rome alone.

The experience led him to understand himself as a pilgrim! 

In 2015 he walked on from Rome to Istanbul. He has written books about both pilgrimages.