Chartres pilgrimage 2023 May 27, draws more than 20,000 pilgrims.
- Nicholas Lim
- May 23, 2023
- 7 min read
The Chartres pilgrimage is a legendary Christian walk from Notre-Dame de Paris to Chartres Cathedral, spanning roughly 60 miles over Pentecost weekend. It is celebrated for its preservation of the Traditional Latin Mass and serves as an intensive, penitential journey of faith and spiritual revival.
The Chartres pilgrimage, also known in French as the pèlerinage de Chrétienté (pilgrimage of Christendom), is an annual pilgrimage from Notre-Dame de Paris to Notre-Dame de Chartres, usually takes place around the feast of Pentecost. It is usually organized by Notre-Dame de Chrétienté (Our Lady of Christendom), a Catholic lay non-profit organization based in Versailles, France. Although the pilgrimage has existed since 1983, the organisation was officially founded in 2000.
The traditionalist Catholic organization Centre Henri et André Charlier decided to initiate a traditionalist pilgrimage from the cathedral of Paris to that of Chartres. The pilgrimage gradually grew in popularity.
In 2007, on the 25th anniversary of the pilgrimage, amid rumours of a forthcoming papal document favouring the use of the 1962 Roman Missal – the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum was in fact published on 7 July of that year – there were nearly ten thousand pilgrims in Chartres on Pentecost Monday May 28 despite difficult weather conditions.
The tradition of walking from Notre Dame to Chartres Cathedral dates back to the 12th century as a stage in the route of the Camino de Santiago. Chartres Cathedral, built between 1194 and 1220, has been an important pilgrimage destination throughout French history due to its relic of the Virgin Mary's veil and its blue rose window depicting Mary holding Christ.
Chartres Cathedral, has been an important pilgrimage destination throughout French history due to its relic of the Virgin Mary's veil and its blue rose window depicting Mary holding Christ.
Our Lady of Chartres is the site of possibly the oldest existing devotion to Mary – tradition states that an ancient order of Celts paid homage, centuries before her birth to the mother of the prophesier Savior, the Virgin who was to bear a Son.
The story of the student’s pilgrimage to Chartres started in 1935 with a group of fifteen young men and girls of the Sorbonne, who sacrificed their Pentecostal holidays in prayer to the Holy Spirit and to Mary. They marched 62 miles to the shrine in the Chartres pilgrimage and prayed in common as did their predecessors. The following year there were 36 who went, and in the following year 150. Then the war came; but during the eight hard years that followed, the pilgrimages were not given up. The numbers increased, until in 1948 about 6,500 students formed their line of march to Mary. In previous years before the 2021 lock-downs, the numbers of pilgrims were around 10 to 15,000.
This year, more than 20,000 Catholics will be walking 62 miles from Paris to Chartres Cathedral in three days in an annual Pentecost pilgrimage of prayer and penance. It’s SOLD OUT in the first time in her history.
For 3 days pilgrims and priests from across the globe will trek through the French countryside praying the rosary, singing, making their confessions, stopping only for Mass (the traditional Latin Mass) and the nights are camped in the open space.
It is not expensive. This is not an event tailored to the affluent. The 3-day event –which covers two nights accommodation in communal tents, food (soup and bread) plus all the facilities provided by the organizers – comes to 50 euros per adult pilgrim and 10 euros for under 18s. It is also extremely difficult since it entails walking for about 12 hours per day and finding no shelter apart from floor-less communal tents at night.
For example, after last year’s pilgrimage, one young lad in a US group spent five days recuperating in a French hospital. Why? Because he left everything on the Road to Chartres. He gave his all to finish the Pilgrimage.
So, yes, the Pilgrimage to Chartres is physically grueling, which is another reason it is so spiritually beneficial. Along the road to Chartres, you will suffer. This trek is an open act of faith and reparation, a thing almost never seen in modern times. In making the Chartres pilgrimage, these young people help to give France a new birth of devotion to Mary; something new and spotless has been born as in the warmth of Bernadette, the Cure of Ars, Vincent de Paul – re-lighted in the hearts of the youth. France must now place her hope in youth, the youth of France and the international youth of the Church, through Our Blessed Mother, the Lady of Chartres.
When the pilgrimage was launched in 1982 at the initiative of a dynamic group of laypeople called the Centre Henri et André Charlier – named for two converts of the first half of the 20th century, a Catholic artist and a Catholic schoolmaster of philosophy – conditions were not good for faithful attached to the traditional Mass. During the pilgrimage’s first years, the several thousand participants would have an outdoor Mass in Paris and then walk to Chartres where the Cathedral “welcomed” them (or rather, did not welcome them) with tightly shut doors. The organizers would set up a temporary platform with an altar in front of the railings at the building’s main entrance, and the pilgrims would celebrate the climax of their three-day walk and its many sacrifices with the awareness of being closed out of the objective of their efforts.
Today the Pentecost Chartres pilgrimage is the largest of its kind in Western Europe, in both number of participants and distance covered.
The pilgrimage is divided into four age groups with varying difficulty and pace, including a "family group" in which parents with children 6 and under camp and walk a portion of the route together.
For those who could not physically complete each days walk there are vehicles readily available to take them to the destinations.
Many of the past participants were part of youth groups or Catholic scouting troops, who walked together carrying flags representing their country or region, crosses, and banners with the image of their chosen patron saint.
Most of the pilgrims were in their early twenties or late teens, from the universities, colleges and schools. Often there are number of unbelievers, atheists among the students; while Protestants and Jews also make up a goodly part of the pilgrims. Some come out of curiosity, some following the persistent urging of a friend; some for the sport of hiking, or to answer an invitation to test their grit and endurance; but whatever their reasons for starting, few end without a definite spiritual “lift.” In the past, many had made their pilgrimage in bare feet over gravel roads, which is not easy; sometimes the sick and crippled go, too.
This year there pilgrims from 28 countries the biggest ever so there will even be more of the same as in the past. For example, teenagers from Ireland carried the Irish flag with babies' feet painted on it to represent her prayer intention for the unborn after abortion was legalized in her country. Couples from Portugal walked the pilgrimage together to consecrate their state of life to Mary.
The following are some testimonies of pilgrims in past years:
"I have prayed for peace, especially in Syria, and in all the world because I don't want other people to live what I have lived, my experience," Kassouha told CNA. He and his family remained in Aleppo throughout the country's civil war and said he witnessed the death of many of his friends and family.
"We have to pray ... we cannot do anything without praying. We are so weak. That is my experience," Kassouha, a 26 year-old Melkite Catholic, said. "We need this time to think about our lives and make a meditation."
"Each year it is a great moment because we can leave our work, leave Paris, leave everything to concentrate on our faith and prayer. I think it is the spiritual summit of our year," 31-year-old Parisian Raphaëlle de Feydeau told CNA.
Feydeau has walked the Chartres pilgrimage together with her family over Pentecost weekend annually for the past thirty years. Her mother carried her along the way when she was an infant.
"Each year we have people asking if they can follow us," Rolland told CNA. "Two years ago there was a lady who was struck by the children walking ... she asked, 'Can I follow you?' She did, and six months later she asked to be baptized."
Rolland said that many vocations have also been discovered or confirmed for young people as they prayerfully walk the pilgrimage.
Priest chaplains could often be seen walking behind the pilgrimage groups hearing confessions of the young participants. Each group had a chaplain who provided meditations on the saints and catechists on the social doctrine of the Church.
Three Masses will take place over the course of the pilgrimage, each in the extraordinary form (traditional Latin Mass), though many private Masses will be said as well.
The culminating Mass was celebrated in Chartres Cathedral by the appointed dignitary.
With Traditionis Custodes in 16th July 2021, the motu proprio with which Pope Francis placed brutal restrictions on the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass and the old form of the Sacraments, the monster of liturgical wars has again raised its hand against those who find their faith, hope, and charity better nourished by the age-old prayers of the Church.
With calculated irony, many of last year’s pilgrims wore specially printed T-shirts or sweatshirts emblazoned with the words “Gardiens de la Tradition,” (guardians of tradition), the French translation of the motu proprio’s title. By their youth and their numbers, the waves of young people who walked towards Chartres with their banners and flags, their enthusiasm and their obvious piety clearly showed that they want God, the Eucharist, solemnity, and age-old beauty at the center of their devotion.
At the end of last year’s pilgrimage, in the presence of the Bishop of Chartres, Monsignor Philippe Christory, Father Alexis Garnier the general almoner of Notre-Dame de Chrétienté, also called on the pilgrims to remain faithful to their “two loyalties: tradition and the Catholic Church.” Both are so clearly under threat, and indeed, the packed cathedral surrounded by thousands of pilgrims who were not able to enter for the final Mass for want of space, was a living reproach against the attempt by Traditionis Custodes to push the traditional Latin Mass into a dark corner, as an exception that must not even be considered and given any publicity.
If thousands of Catholic youths who have been to this pilgrimage the past many decades, can recognize the value of Catholic tradition, all the more should all Catholics stay true to tradition. After all wasn’t it through tradition that we received the Catholic faith?
The Pilgrimage to Chartres, is for the unchangeable realities of Catholic Tradition – the Latin Mass, the Rosary, the Catholic family, the Four Last Things, and the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.
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