Rome 2025

On 2 August 2025, at six in the morning, the group was at the airport on its way to Milan; for some, it was the first time they had ever got on a plane. They went round the city and celebrated Mass in the Duomo, and the next day a train took them to Padua, where a Capuchin friar told them about the life of St Leopold and where they received the Eucharist from Fr Ferran in the Basilica of St Anthony. Throughout the month, Albert Lorda recounted each day in a letter addressed to “parents, grandparents, friends and the rest of the pilgrims”.

From Padua to Assisi

On 4 August, at three in the morning, they started walking, passing through Fratta Polesine, Ferrara, Portomaggiore, Faenza, Predappio, San Piero in Bagno, Pieve Santo Stefano and Sansepolcro, where they did the whole stage in 4 hours, 6 minutes and 52 seconds. Every day, the first hour was spent in silence and prayer; at the stop they read Cardinal Ratzinger’s conversation with Peter Seewald, and in the afternoon there was adoration, the book In Conversation with God and Mass with the people of the town, sometimes in Italian, Catalan and Spanish all at once. At the end of a climb, the man who looked after a hermitage of Our Lady of the Rosary gave them a rose to put on the cross that always goes with them.

There was no shortage of long stages or stories: 34 kilometres to Faenza, 36 to Pieve Santo Stefano, a Disney princess cap for whoever lost their own, a water park and get-togethers almost every evening. In Predappio, Mussolini’s birthplace, they reflected that “when we look for our greatness in what is human, we dig our own grave”. On 15 August, the feast of the Assumption, they walked in the shade beside the Tiber, and the next day, in an area struck by an earthquake, they celebrated Mass in an old tenth-century abbey.

Assisi

On 17 August, after more than 300 kilometres and fifteen days, they reached Assisi. They prayed at the tomb of Blessed Carlo Acutis, whom the Pope would canonise on 7 September, and there the rest of the pilgrims joined them, having flown into Fiumicino. All together they celebrated Mass at Santa Maria sopra Minerva and took the first photo of the whole group at the Basilica of St Francis. The next day, at Santa Chiara, they saw the crucifix before which St Francis understood what the Lord was asking of him, visited San Damiano and prayed at the saint’s tomb.

The last stretch

With the group more than doubled, they carried on through Montefalco, Massa Martana — almost a thousand metres of climbing — and Montecastrilli, through mud that stuck to their shoes; some of the girls ended up walking barefoot. Then came Orte, Civita Castellana and Formello, the penultimate stage and the hardest: more than twelve hours on the road. “The situation was enough to make anyone lose heart, but these pilgrims are made of iron and the love of God,” wrote Albert. That evening they pulled out the sports hall’s retractable stands to set up an open-air altar, with God’s creation as the altarpiece. A few days earlier, Fr Ferran had added a postscript for the families: “You have amazing children.”

Rome

On 25 August, the last stage, they had 29 kilometres left from Formello to the Vatican, the last of the 579 on the way. They stopped five hundred metres from Piazza del Popolo and entered it singing “Dona toda tu vida”; their families were waiting there, and there were hugs, tears and laughter. All together, praying the rosary, they made their way to the Vatican, crossed the Holy Door of St Peter’s Basilica and, with their prayer before Peter’s tomb, gained the Jubilee indulgence.

The days in Rome were family days. On the 26th, at the Catacombs of St Callixtus, the Seniors joined them, and now “all three parishes were there in full”. On the 27th, at the general audience in the Paul VI Hall, Pope Leo XIV spoke about Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Olives and asked for peace in the Holy Land; Marc and Marina gave him a pilgrim’s book and told him about the way from Padua to Rome, and the Pope told them that he prays for all of them. On the 28th, the Cor Ginesta, the parish choir, sang Mass at the Altar of the Chair of Peter and, at the end, with the organ finally open, the Virolai. They also celebrated Mass at Santa Maria Maggiore, where Pope Francis is buried, and at St Paul Outside the Walls, where they crossed the fourth Holy Door before returning home.