Places of pilgrimage
«...to make a pilgrimage with them to the House of God...»
Basically there are as many places of pilgrimage in every Catholic religious landscape as there are churches, chapels, wayside crosses and wayside shrines. After all, whenever a Christian visits one of these places, whether as an individual or in a group, he is undertaking a «pilgrimage».
In his book Heilige Stätten des Schweizerlandes (Holy Places of the Country of Switzerland) published in 1968, Father Rudolf Henggeler of Einsiedeln lists about three hundred places of pilgrimage. Many of them only attract local visitors and pilgrimage has even ceased to exist in some places.
But it is not the number of pilgrims that turn a location into a place of pilgrimage, but the “concentrated” presence of God that manifests itself in one form or another. We present a selection here.
In our selection we have focussed on places of pilgrimage that are recognised nationally and internationally.