“Pilgrimage” (from the older form “peregrinàggio”): noun – 1. a. A devotional practice consisting in traveling, alone or in a group, to a sanctuary or sacred place to carry out special acts of worship, whether out of piety, as a vow, or for penance (…). 2. Archaic: wandering, exile; yet still present in mystical language in the expression “earthly pilgrimage,” meaning life itself; in the Bible, it translates the Latin “peregrinatio.”
There’s a whole universe within this Treccani dictionary entry. Because a pilgrimage is a journey you make both outwardly and inwardly—in search of Something or Someone—while engaging with others who are doing the same, in a miraculous overlap of heaven and earth that regenerates you, rebalancing your inner compass each time anew.
This is what has driven me, for nearly thirty years, once or twice a year, to board one of the oldest, slowest trains around, together with a sea of people of all ages, backgrounds, and walks of life, to travel with the Unitalsi to Lourdes. It’s no coincidence, given my personal journey, that both of my extended families—Unitalsi, which shaped me in my youth, and Faith and Light, which welcomed me as an adult—were born in Lourdes. One in 1903, the other in 1971, both emerging from different stories of rejection: of life, and of society.
Stories of rejection that became two different and magnificent stories of love: Unitalsi, “evangelizing and ministering to and with the sick, the disabled, and those in difficulty”; and Faith and Light, “building deep bonds between people with intellectual disabilities, their families, and their friends.”
Although Unitalsi—an Italian organization with a national presidency and a network of Sections and Subsections—is deeply and historically tied to the iconic White Train, the pilgrimage to Lourdes is not its ultimate goal, but a means of nurturing the spiritual life of its members.
In its 120 years of existence, what once was described as “transporting the sick to Lourdes and international sanctuaries” is now more rightly defined as a “public association of the faithful who, empowered by their faith and their special charism of charity, seek to enrich the spiritual life of its members and to carry out evangelization and apostolic work with and for those who are sick or disabled, in accordance with the Gospel and the teaching of the Church.”
For the international movement of Faith and Light, pilgrimages and global gatherings primarily serve to build bonds of fraternal support among its many communities scattered across the world.
That said, it’s easy to see how different the spirit, pace, logic, scale, organization, and needs are between Unitalsi and Faith and Light pilgrimages. Unitalsi brings hundreds of thousands of people to Lourdes each year through Section pilgrimages from April to October, and the National pilgrimage in September. Its charism of “service” creates a world in which the distinction between helper and helped is clearly reflected in uniforms, roles, shifts, and accommodations. In practice, these distinctions often reinforce a sense of “us” and “them.”
By contrast, the charism of friendship makes Faith and Light pilgrimages—organized every ten years (worldwide from 1971 to 2001, then provincially from 2011 onward)—far less structured and much more colorful. “The young people, the friends, and the parents” experience every stage of the journey together, in the same conditions and at the same time. The concept of “us” and “them” doesn’t even exist.
What these two different ways of “pilgriming” have in common is the Gospel itself: whether it takes the form of “doing for,” like Unitalsi, or “being with,” like Faith and Light, the center of it all is the living God—origin and end of all things—who calls us to live this mysterious mixture of spirit and flesh, our very life, as if it were a pilgrimage. And who, in the end, restores it all into unity.
No encyclopedia would be enough to describe everything I have received spiritually—and learned practically—from my Unitalsi brothers and sisters and from our friends in difficulty, both during pilgrimages and in daily life. I say that because what I received gave me structure and helped shape who I am today. What I experience with the young people, parents, and friends of Faith and Light has added even deeper and more beautiful nuances to my human and spiritual beliefs. And so I always end up saying that my formation in Unitalsi has supported my journey into Faith and Light—and that Faith and Light has radically changed the way I live Unitalsi. For this, I will never thank God enough—here below or up above. OL
