Eight perpetual pilgrims set off from Indianapolis on a 36-day National Eucharistic Pilgrimage that will cross 10 states
INDIANAPOLIS — On the morning of May 18 at his Mass of inauguration as bishop of Rome, Pope Leo XIV called Catholics around the world to “build a Church founded on God’s love, a sign of unity, a missionary Church that opens its arms to the world.”
“Together,” he said in his homily, “as one people, as brothers and sisters, let us walk toward God and love one another.”
Those were, in a sense, the marching orders for the eight young adult Catholics sent forth hours later from St. John the Evangelist Church in Indianapolis on a 36-day National Eucharistic Pilgrimage that will cross 10 states — Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. It will go through 20 dioceses and four Eastern Catholic eparchies before concluding on June 22 in Los Angeles.
“That’s the mission of the Church, to walk with love, walk with truth and to share the good news of the Gospel,” said Charlie McCullough, the team leader of the eight “perpetual pilgrims” taking part in the pilgrimage. “We’ll get to carry out that mission of the Church here in the United States.”
This year’s National Eucharistic Pilgrimage — on its St. Katharine Drexel Route from Indianapolis to Los Angeles — builds on the four routes of the pilgrimage last year that started on the feast of Corpus Christi in Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western points of the U.S. and converged on Indianapolis at the start of the National Eucharistic Congress.
This year’s pilgrimage will conclude on the same feast in Los Angeles, which also marks the conclusion of the three-year National Eucharistic Revival.
“I’m blown away by what God’s doing in the archdiocese,” pilgrim Cheyenne Johnson said. “The grace from the congress last year has been so tangible. Hopefully, it will continue to spill out and help to build up the Church in the United States.”
“Being able to work for the archdiocese and pouring out what I’ve received in college in Bloomington has been a gift,” pilgrim Rachel Levy added. “I’m excited to be able to continue to pour it out to people across the country.”
Levy described the pilgrimage as “a unique opportunity” to carry out Pope Leo’s call “to love all the people that we’ll be encountering along the pilgrimage and be a light of Christ to them.”
At the same time, she also noted that the pilgrimage will give her and her fellow perpetual pilgrims a chance to witness to those they’ll meet along the way how “to love God alone … in all the times that we’ll have in adoration and prayer.”
“There are so many ways that we’re able to witness to people across the country,” she said, “by loving them very intentionally, but also by showing them how to love God very intentionally in the Blessed Sacrament.”
Perpetual pilgrim Leslie Reyes-Hernandez grew up in a Chicago suburb not far from Pope Leo’s boyhood home. So, she was excited to begin the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage on the same day as his Mass of inauguration at the Vatican.
“This is big, not only for the Catholic Church, but for our country as well,” she said.
Reyes-Hernandez, 26, also knows from experience the impact that the National Eucharistic Congress had on people across the country last year.
She attended the event last summer that drew more than 50,000 people to Indianapolis. The changes that have happened in her life since then have amazed her.
“The seed was planted in my heart here,” she said.
Capuchin Franciscan Father Christopher Iwancio was glad to come to Indianapolis to be a concelebrant at the Mass at the start of the pilgrimage. He’ll later join the perpetual pilgrims for two weeks during their travels.
He ministers in Los Angeles and lives where earlier this year a wildfire roared through Altadena, California, a stopping point of this year’s pilgrimage.
“We’re going to walk past the homes of my students, colleagues and friends who lost their homes in the fires,” Father Christopher said. “So, in this Jubilee year of a pilgrimage of hope, to bring that hope to people in different areas is powerful.”
He also said that the hope he saw in the way that Catholics and others responded so positively to the recent election of Pope Leo was similar to the hope he experienced in many people in the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage last year, something he would like to see repeated in this year’s pilgrimage.
“This is what the hope of the Eucharist brings us,” Father Christopher said. “We are still walking with Christ. We’re not walking alone in our troubles and difficulties. God is with us.”
Indianapolis Archbishop Charles C. Thompson was the principal celebrant of the Mass that started this year’s pilgrimage.
In his homily at the Mass, Archbishop Thompson invited the approximately 700 people gathered for the liturgy to carry out in their own lives the mission that the perpetual pilgrims will embrace in their journey of faith to Los Angeles.
“Wherever any of us are headed, each of us are meant to go forth as missionary disciples of Jesus Christ,” he said. “Wherever that immediate stop may be, our ultimate destination is heaven, which is why we constantly preach the kingdom of God through both word and example.
“While eight special pilgrims, along with chaplains and other companions, embark on a 36-day pilgrimage to cover some 3,300 miles through 10 states, we do not necessarily have to physically travel to faraway places to be missionary disciples,” he said.
“We need only be willing to step out of comfort zones, focus outward to recognize the needs of others and then act as Jesus commands, namely, by loving one another as He loves us.”
