FEATURE STORY

The Canberra Times

1 May 2007

We are told that we live in godless times, yet more and more people all over the world are going on pilgrimages: as if being on the road to somewhere holy suits us better than being inside the building at the end of it. The new pilgrims are Christians and Muslims but also Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Jains. There are also swelling numbers of don’t knows: people with little commitment to any established religion whose marriage has collapsed, or whose wife has died, who have lost their job or retired, and decide to take time off on the road to somewhere ancient, beautiful and reputedly holy, to sort their lives out. The clear and the woolly, the devout and the troubled, those who know exactly where they are going and why and those who haven’t a clue, increasingly walk shoulder to shoulder along these ancient tracks. The rise in popularity of pilgrimages all over the world in the past 80 years has been dramatic.

In 1925, 90,662 Muslim pilgrims performed the Hajj, but by 1995 the figure had gone up more than tenfold; by December last year it had doubled again to over two million. For centuries, interest in walking ”the Way of St James”, the 1000 mile pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago di Compostela in north- western Spain, legendary resting place of St James, was on the wane: by the late ’80s only a handful of pilgrims arrived at the city’s cathedral every day. But then came the revival: by 1998 the numbers had jumped from 3500 per year to nearly 10 times that number; by 2006 they had topped 100,000. The Kumbh Mela, the moving Hindu festival on the Ganges, has always drawn crowds but today they are stupendous, the biggest assemblies of humanity ever seen in history, numbering tens of millions and readily visible from space. Also in north India, the site of Buddha’s enlightenment, the bodi tree in Bodhgaya and the Mahabodi temple that stands next to it, have attracted monks and lay Buddhists from around the world for decades but in modest numbers. But despite Bihar’s reputation as one of the poorest and most dangerous corners of India, the crowds of pilgrims have continued to multiply: now more than 350,000 come every year and the small town is crammed with monasteries, temples and meditation centres. Last month the Indian Government inaugurated a special train connecting Bodhgaya with the other main Buddhist pilgrimage sites. But it is in Europe that the pilgrimage, while enjoying a surge of popularity, has also undergone a subtle change of meaning. In the Middle Ages, a pilgrimage to Lourdes or Medjugorje was like the Hajj for Muslims or a dip in the Ganges for Hindus, performed to obtain specific benefits from heaven. But the huge rise in numbers of Western pilgrims today derives from a desire to reduce one’s life to its simplest elements and see what is left. This August the Reverend Edward Condry, an Anglican priest and canon treasurer of Britain’s Canterbury Cathedral, is leading a group of 30 pilgrims from Canterbury to Rome by bicycle along the restored Via Francigena, an ancient network of modern roads and restored trails that in 1994 was

declared a Cultural Route by the Council of Europe. ”Thanks to Thomas a Becket,” says Condry, ”in the Middle Ages Canterbury was one of the four great pilgrimage destinations, along with Santiago, Jerusalem and Rome. But the Reformation killed it off. Calvin’s view was typical: a pilgrimage, he said, never gained anyone salvation. ”Even today we Protestants feel strange at sites like Lourdes. But for me the pilgrimage is the dominant metaphor for what faith is like: walking embodies the spirit of faith.” Condry is also walking to Santiago, doing the 1000 mile pilgrimage a week at a time, one week per year. ”People go on pilgrimages for hundreds of different reasons,” he says, ”as a physical challenge, as tourists, to sort their lives out, or a combination of those. But whatever the reason, they always find some spiritual meaning in it.”

Perhaps the most truly modern pilgrimages are like those conducted by the Dalai Lama when he travelled to Lourdes and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, or by the Christians who travelled with him to Bodhgaya, or the joint pilgrimages of Jews, Muslims and Christians who tramp between places of intense meaning to all three religions in the Holy Land. Because, as Condry explains, the pilgrimage’s goal is no longer necessarily the point. ”Walking is such a minimalist activity,” he says, ”the less you have in your rucksack the better, and with this stripping away of possessions you are left startlingly exposed. And that’s the significance of the pilgrimage. Reaching Santiago is important but do I really want to reach Santiago?” The Independent

I think this is a great story. Its a feature story, and I haven’t found many religion based feature story, it also manages to link quite a few different religions together which is interesting. I thought it was well rounded.

NEWS VALUES

Impact/Consequence – No. It doesn’t really affect anyone greatly

Conflict - No, it is more talking about an issue not argueing it.

Timeliness - No, it is a feature article so timeliness isnt featured .. ha..

Proximity - It does link back to Australians due to the fact that it talks about lots of types of people, and a lot of people could be classified in that way

Prominence - No prominent people, but prominent religious places are talked about.

Currency - No, not a trend in media, not a popular issue.

Human Interest - Yes, if you were into reading about pilgrimages then this softer story would be interesting.

Unusual/Novelty - Not really, although its not what you usually read in the paper i suppose.