Why church doors should be open

Phil McCarthy • April 29, 2024

When I see some little church here, in this city, or when I see it in another diocese where I go, with its doors closed, that's a bad sign. Churches must always have their doors open because this is a symbol of what a church is: always open. The Church is called to always be the open house of the Father. So that, if someone wants to follow a movement of the Spirit and approaches looking for God, they will not find themselves coming face to face with the coldness of a closed door. [1]

Pope Francis

Over the last year I have been walking pilgrim ways between Catholic cathedrals and one or more shrines within the same diocese. Sadly I come ‘face to face with the coldness of a closed door’ at many of the Catholic churches enroute, and even some of our cathedrals. If you are a weary pilgrim hoping to experience the church, light a candle and say a prayer, a bolted church door is a disappointment. An open door can be the high point of the day. I have found that Anglican places of worship are more likely to be open.

As Pope Francis points out, as well as being physical structures, doors are metaphors. An open church provides a welcome to those is search of God, but a locked church sends seekers a clear message: "Keep out: this is private space."

Francis has written of pilgrims:

Whoever they may be — young or old, rich or poor, sick and troubled or curious tourists — let them find due welcome, because in every person there is a heart in search of God, at times without being fully aware of it.[2]

Whether we walk or not, we all have ‘a heart in search of God’. A friend recently told me that as a young man he was at a moment of crisis. He walked into a church and sat down. That twenty minutes of silent reflection changed his life. He later came to faith and has taken up important lay roles in the Church. He believes that if the church door had been locked, his life might have taken a very different direction.

A church with an open door is a witness to shared faith and an evangelical presence in its neighbourhood. Churches fulfil important roles for the common good of the community in times of crisis, as we saw in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. And in ordinary times, churches can be important places of refuge from the noise and relentless busyness of everyday life. A few moments of silence and stillness can transform a person's day, even for a confirmed atheist.

On my walks I have come across open churches which provide examples of what can be done. In the Diocese of Clifton there is St James’ Priory next to Bristol Bus & Coach Station. The Church does not have a resident priest, but it is open daily for Eucharistic adoration. I have witnessed how well this opportunity is taken up. Despite the city centre location, thefts and acts of vandalism are rare and, when they occur, minor. In deep countryside I visited the isolated Church of St Thomas, Claughton in the Diocese of Lancaster. There was a notice inviting visitors into the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, incense in the air and recorded plainsong. The church provided welcome and spiritual uplift. The experience of visiting churches can be enhanced by making printed prayers available or by providing a notice with QR codes for sites like Universalis and the Jesuit Pray As You Go app so that people can easily access prayer resources and the readings of the day on their phones.

The potential benefits are great, and it can be done, so why are the doors of so many churches locked? In my view part of the problem is that many Christians tend to have a utilitarian view of their churches, seeing no need to open them except when a service is being held. The architectural styles of churches built (necessarily cheaply) after World War II may reinforce this. Spires may point to the heavens, reminding us of the transcendence of God, but the sanctuary light beside the tabernacle is a sign of the immanence of God, as present for us in the most modest 1960's prefab church as in great cathedral.

In this post Christendom age, churches with open doors are important signals of an apostolic spirit, openness to the neighbourhood, engagement in the life of the local community, and a demonstration of God's abundant love and generosity.

Nevertheless church leaders and pastoral councils need to manage the practicalities, and many will be aware of cautionary stories. Parishes must balance personal safety and protecting property with being a sacred presence in their neighbourhood. The Catholic Insurance Service advises that there are no additional premiums for extended church opening hours, and Ecclesiastical, the main insurer of Church of England churches, actually encourages them to be open. This implies that open doors do not significantly increase the risk of claims. Here are some practical steps to mitigate risks and avoid potential problems:

Electronic security can protect the sanctuary from unwanted incursions and a safe can be installed for smaller financially or religiously valuable objects.
Some churches provide daytime access using a keypad lock. The code can be given to people who ask to visit without the need for someone to physically unlock the doors. At night the church can be locked more securely.
It may be possible to allow access to the narthex and to provide a kneeler and prayer resources in this area.
In many parishes there will be lay people prepared to organise and participate in a rota to unlock and lock church doors. In the early Church there was a lay ministry of the ostiary (usher) who opened the doors and received people. This could be revived.
For my part I encourage pilgrims who wish to visit churches on one of my pilgrim ways to check the parish website or phone the office in advance, and to remember that a single priest may be covering several churches and that he or she may live many miles away.
The National Churches Trust is a useful source of advice and information.

We may not be hiding our sanctuary lights under bushels, but too often they are concealed by fearfully locked doors. This does not present a spiritual confidence or a welcoming face to a society in desperate need of meaning and hope.

It is a widespread belief that the churches are in decline, and certainly this is undeniable in certain places. But there is also evidence of growth, and with 66% of UK adults saying they think that churches are important for society (according to a December 2023 opinion poll), closed doors risk alienating people from the Church at a time when it is most needed.

There are some inspiring prompts to encourage your local church to open its doors. The Catholic Church, for example, will be celebrating a Jubilee year in 2025 when the Holy Doors of the great Roman basilicas will be opened in an invitation to the world, setting a tone that could be echoed by the local church. Dioceses are producing resources to encourage churches to open their doors, for example, the Diocese of Ely's Visitor Welcome Toolkit .

And whether it is through new synodal practices being adopted by Catholics, or through a renewed desire to forge better local relationships among all denominations, Christians can demonstrate a spirit of openness. Churches can offer the local community a place of encounter, an experience of the sacred for seekers and a place of rest for the occasional footsore pilgrim!

Phil McCarthy is the Project Lead of the Hearts in Search of God pilgrim ways project.

[1] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20191023_udienza-generale.html

[2] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2016/january/documents/papa-francesco_20160121_giubileo-operatori-santuari.html

This blog was first published on the website of Together for the Common Good (T4CG). Together for the Common Good is a national Christian charity dedicated to the renewal of the civic ecology by bringing covenantal thinking into church and civic life.

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Another Day in Paradise, but "Why are we walking?"

By Eddie Gilmore • July 21, 2025

I was in the north of Italy recently on the Via Francigena, the ancient pilgrimage path to Rome that begins in Canterbury. My wife, Yim Soon and I were with a group from L’Arche in France who are walking to Assisi in one-week sections. It was the second day, we were going up an interminably steep hill, it was hot, and we had ‘slept’ the night before on a floor, and with that motley group of twenty-five sharing two toilets (one of which had a door with no lock!). Yim Soon turned to me and asked, “Why are we walking?” The pair of us had done a lot of walking up until that point, and we had a lot of hiking still to come, so that was a very reasonable question to ask. One immediate answer was that we had the unexpected gift of time. I had moved to Ireland at the end of 2023 to take up a new job but things hadn’t worked out and I left in August 2024. We’d let out our house in the UK until June 2025 so Yim Soon had said to me, “Let’s walk!” I’d immediately agreed and our plans quickly took shape. We would do the Camino in Spain in October, the Lycian Way along the Turkish coast in February and March; then in April and May, we would follow the Way of Francis to Assisi and Rome. We also had an invitation to spend the winter with an old friend of Yim Soon from Korea who was now living with her family near Atlanta. This would include spending Christmas at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, the Trappist monastery of Thomas Merton that I’d always dreamed of visiting. There is a pleasing simplicity to life on the road. You scrunch your sleeping bag and the rest of your stuff into a rucksack in the morning and you walk. That's it! A lot of the usual worries of life seem to drop away and the biggest anxiety becomes making sure you don't get lost! Or where the next café con leche is going to come from! There's just something calming and centring about the age-old act of putting one foot in front of the other. There is also something about it that brings people together and draws out their story. And what incredible people we met on our various walks, and what wonderful stories we heard. And how we laughed with one another. The beautiful scenery is therapeutic too. In Turkey we were treated to one amazing view after another as we paced up and down the mountains that fringe the Mediterranean. In Italy we passed each day through yet another stunning medieval fortified hilltop town. And since we were doing all 500 miles of the Camino Francés, we would see the stark changes in landscape as we crossed the north of Spain: from the Pyrenees and the mountains near Pamplona, through the flat, arid meseta, then into the verdant hills of Galicia as we neared Santiago. There is a heightened awareness of the natural world: the sunrises, the sunsets, little wild flowers that appear as if out of nowhere. Food is deeply appreciated and I don't think that a meal at a Michelin restaurant could have satisfied me as much as the bread, cheese, tomato and cucumber I ate one day on a beach in Turkey, which we'd reached by a rocky and slightly hair-raising trek down a mountain. On the Camino I developed the art of the second, or even third breakfast. We had earned it! I also loved the shared international meals, and there’s one that particularly stands out. I’d been looking forward to returning to the municipal albergue (pilgrim hostel) at a town called Nájera because of what had happened there nine years before when I’d been doing that same walk. I’d got in with a group of Koreans, partly on account of having a Korean wife, and they’d prepared a banquet and invited myself and my Australian friend James to join them. We’d also got in with the Italians and they wanted to feed us as well. Then a Spanish guy Gerado offered us food. We could have eaten three meals that evening, and I was determined that on this next visit it would be me doing the cooking for some of the lovely people we’d met on the way. I got to work in the kitchen, with a little help from my international friends, and a large group of us sat and shared a feast. There were people from different countries and continents and speaking different languages; there were twenty-year-olds who seemed happy to hang out with those of us who were three times their age; and there was a range of backgrounds and beliefs and reasons for walking. It was utterly joyous. And after we’d eaten I picked up a guitar and started the singing, and various members of the group took a turn, and we were joined by others in that very diverse dining-room. The first song I did was one I’d written after that first Camino in 2015 and I told the story of how it had been inspired. James and I had been sitting on a bench outside the albergue in the early morning, waiting for the water to boil for our tea. The sun was just starting to rise above the trees and there was the sound of rushing water from the river, as well as the first birdsong. We were sitting there in companionable silence and then James said, “Another day in paradise.” Those words became the title of a book about pilgrimage which I wrote years later. They are also the first line of the chorus of my song ‘El Camino’ which I sang in that same albergue in Nájera in October, 2024. And I was so touched when one of the young people in our group, Lucy from Croatia, remarked at the end, “Wouldn’t it be cool if one of us came back here in nine years’ time and cooked for the other pilgrims and kept this story going!” Why do we walk? Well, yes, it’s the food, the fellowship, the fun, the breathtaking scenery, the little daily miracles and random acts of kindness, and the opportunity to live a bit more simply and to discover that we can be very content with very little. But it’s also, as my friend James observed one morning when sitting with me on a bench outside a pilgrim hostel in Spain, an opportunity to give thanks for another day in paradise. Eddie Gilmore is a Hearts in Search of God project collaborator. For more about Eddie and his books click here .

Become a Pilgrim of Hope for a Day!

By Phil McCarthy • July 20, 2025

Registration for Day Pilgrims is now open. On some days there are new shorter sections. Registration will close on 21st August 2025, so REGISTER NOW to avoid disappointment! The theme of the 2025 Jubilee is ‘pilgrims of hope’ and this has inspired 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, named after the Evangelists, SS Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, start at the Catholic cathedrals in Cardiff, Leeds, Norwich and London, and will bless our nations with a Sign of the Cross and with the Gospels. The routes 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 register to join for stages. On some days there are opportunities for shorter walks.

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.