An estimated quarter of a million people had an encounter with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist last summer when four teams of young people brought the Blessed Sacrament through large cities, mountain villages and rural towns on the Plains. The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage will once again step out in a bid to bring Christ to the “margins” and the masses.
The National Eucharistic Revival announced that a 36 day pilgrimage will commence May 18 in Indianapolis, site of 2024’s National Eucharistic Congress, and travel some 3,300 miles across the Midwest and Southwest regions of the United States. Twenty dioceses and four eparchies will host pilgrimage events on the way to the conclusion in Los Angeles on the feast of Corpus Christi.
This year's National Eucharistic Pilgrimage will consist of a single route, named in honor of St. Katharine Drexel Route, rather than the four routes that began from the four compass points of the US and converged on Indianapolis last year. A team of eight Perpetual Pilgrims along with a few chaplains, recently were selected to travel the Drexel Route.
Named for St. Katharine Drexel, the Philadelphia heiress who founded a religious congregation to minister to the needs of African Americans and Native Americans, the Drexel Route is planning to make many unique stops, including a visit to the Tomb of Archbishop Fulton Sheen in Peoria, Illinois; the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother in Oklahoma City, and missions in Southern California. A Eucharistic Procession beginning at the baseball field from the movie "Field of Dreams" will take place as part of the events in Iowa.
“This year’s pilgrimage will again focus on Eucharistic encounters with marginalized communities, bringing the Blessed Sacrament to assisted living facilities, food banks, a juvenile detention center, a hospital, and a federal prison along the route,” said pilgrimage organizers in a press release.
And, because 2025 has been designated “the Jubilee Year of Hope,” the pilgrimage will have a focus on Eucharistic healing. Events are planned in Wichita, Kansas, to honor the victims of the Potomac River plane crash, which originated in the midwestern city, and their families; at the border of Mexico with a special Benediction and prayers for all migrants and refugees, and in Los Angeles, where organizers hope to bring our Eucharistic Lord to the communities impacted by the wildfires.
Readers can find a map of the route with more details here.
