Having posted about forthcoming walking pilgrimages in England and the USA, I'm pleased to be able to add the notice about a walking pilgrimage on the Eastern end of Europe. Please say a prayer for the success of this pilgrimage.
UVRussia's pilgrimage - July 25 - 29, 2013
UNA VOCE RUSSIA, together with the Roman Catholic parish of St. Nicholas in Luga and Greek Catholic parish of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in St. Petersburg, will mark the Year of Faith with the first St. Olaf Pilgrimage from Luga to Veliky Novgorod on July 25 to 29, 2013.
Saint Olaf Haraldsson, King of Norway, is one of relatively few Catholic saints who have spent time within the nowadays borders of Russia. As an exile during the rebellion of heathen nobles in A. D. 1029, he went to the northern Russian city of Novgorod to stay with his friends, Prince Yaroslav the Wise (Jarizleifr of the Norse sagas) and Princess Ingegerd. Tradition claims that here St. Olaf worked several miracles, more to be added to them after he went back to Norway and died as a martyr in the Battle of Stiklestad. A Latin-rite church was dedicated to St. Olaf in Novgorod; both Westerners and Russians prayed there, and it is last mentioned in the 14th century, long after the schism that tore most of the Christian East away from the Catholic Church. Nowadays, an icon of St. Olaf, consecrated by the Holy Father Benedict XVI, is venerated in Novgorod's Catholic parish of Sts. App. Peter and Paul.
The pilgrims will march about 25 km (15.5 miles) a day, making tent camps to pray, talk and sleep, and then celebrate a Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman rite on July 29, the day of St. Olaf's death, in the Novgorod parish. All the other liturgical celebrations during the pilgrimage will be either in the Extraordinary Form or in the Slavo-Byzantine rite. The pilgrimage will also feature three lectures about the documents of Vatican II, as required for obtaining the plenary indulgence for the Year of Faith.
See more (in Russian) here or contact Una Voce Russia at info@unavoce.ru.
