Wayfaring alone or with others

When undertaking a pilgrimage, one of the first questions to ask is whether you want to strike out on your own, or join a group with a guide.

The primary advantage to traveling individually is that you can set your own schedule; but groups offer professional guides to show you the way.

"It really is, in my opinion, a personal decision," said Warren Goudreau, owner of What A Deal Travel in Eagle Mountain and a member of the Catholic Business Network. "If you typically do things independently, and you’re looking for your own spiritual awakening, then certainly going by yourself would be the best way to go. "

However, because pilgrims typically are looking to gain spiritual knowledge, a guided tour may be best. "If I were to do pilgrimage personally, I would take one with priest because I would be looking to draw from that spiritual presence," he said.

Tours also offer safety and economy, said James G. Adair, president and owner of The Catholic Tour. "Hotel and meals are always better on a group basis since you receive a better product in that area" because the tour operator buys in bulk, he said.

A tour also can save a pilgrim time; instead of wandering about trying to find a place, the guide takes the group directly to the site and conveys the message of each shrine, rather than the pilgrim having to do the research on his own, Adair said.

Goudreau agreed. "It’s usually really nice to do a tour or a pilgrimage, especially if you haven’t been to a particular location," he said. "You want to see all these sites and you want the dynamic type of input that you’re going to get from a tour guide or your priest, whoever is taking you on this pilgrimage."

However, going as an individual means you may go somewhere off the beaten path, or have an experience that wouldn’t be possible with a group, he said. For example, when he and his wife went to Rome, they attended Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, then asked an elderly woman sitting next to them if she knew where Pope John Paul II’s resting place was. She led them through three gates, each with guards that allowed them to pass, "and we were at the resting place of Pope John Paul with nobody else; all the tourists groups were not even going through at that time," Goudreau said. "We spent almost a full 10 minutes — just the three of us and the guards around Pope John Paul’s tomb. It was an incredible experience, one that we wouldn’t have been able to do as a tour group and it was not a planned thing. It just happened."

Pilgrimages are powerful testaments to faith, Adair said. In 29 years, he’s guided more than 100,000 pilgrims, some of whom had left the Church, but "after the pilgrimage, they start thinking about what they may have missed in our Church and so many have come back," he said. In addition, he’s witnessed a number of physical and spiritual conversions that have come to people when they have participated in a Catholic pilgrimage.