A strong signal for pilgrims

On May 8, at 6:08 p.m., after only four towers of votes, white smoke escaped from the Sistine Chapel. However, “May 8 is not only on the day of the capitulation of Germany, but also that of Spring Saint-Michel: this celebration commemorates the appearance of the Archangel at Mont Gargan (end of the 5th century), in the south of Italy, the oldest sanctuary dedicated to it in Western Europe”, recalls Vincent Juhel, director of the Les Chemins du Mont-Saint-Michel association.

How not to do the connection with Saint Michel, chief of the celestial militias and the slayer of the dragon who symbolizes the evil, by hearing the words of the 267th sovereign pontiff, during his first appearance at the loggia of the Saint-Pierre basilica: “The evil will not prevail”?

About this capital theme addressed by Pope Léon XIV, journalists underlined the continuity not only with Léon XIII, to whom we owe the “prayer to Saint Michel”, but also with Pope Francis, who had invited the faithful to recite this prayer at the end of each rosary, during the month of October (month of the Rosary), and who had devoted, in 2013, the Vatican to Archangel.

A symbolic date

This May 8, 2025, precisely, began the first pilgrimage of national magnitude to Mont-Saint-Michel, from Saint-Malo; With, for theme, the spiritual fight, and as a particular intention of the unity of the Church.

“During a break, comments Brieuc Clerc, one of the organizers, we learned that white smoke had appeared. We asked the pilgrims to keep their laptops extinct during the last kilometers, and they were able to hear live in the evening, at the bivouac, the famous “Habemus Papam”. We were very affected by the synchronicity of this announcement with our first day of pilgrimage, especially since Saint Michel was cited in the blessing Urbi and Orbi. We also delighted the coincidence between the intention of our pilgrimage and the motto of Pope Leo XIV: “In illelo UNUM“, Which means:” in the one who is one, let’s be one “.”

Let us also remember that May 8 is an important date in two French pilgrimage sanctuaries. It was the day of the birth of the holy parish priest of Ars (1786) and the first communion of Saint Thérèse de Lisieux (1884) who received the “sweet kiss of Jesus to (his) soul”. A few years later, she will ask Léon XIII, in Rome, the authorization to enter Carmel before the required age.

Son of Saint Augustine

“I am a son of Saint Augustine, an Augustinian,” said the new pope during his first speech before the assembly crowd at Place Saint-Pierre. This bond of Pope Léon XIV with the order of Saint-Augustin, of which he was prior general, induces a new coincidence … Since May 8 is also the feast of Blessed Marie-Catherine de Saint-Augustin (1632-1668), co-founder of the Church of Canada!

The Pope’s membership of this order has something to delight pilgrims. The author of Confessions was indeed a great walker: he linked Hippone (Algeria) several times, of which he was bishop (from 395 to his death, in 430), in Carthage (Tunisia), where the councils stood. And this sentence attributed to it could be the motto of all those who walk: “Advance on your road, because it only exists by your walk. Dominique Martinet, an enthusiast of this saint, has also created several routes, grouped under the name of Via Augustina,, In Algeria, Tunisia and Italy. One of these routes ends in Pavia, an Italian city where Saint Augustine is buried.

Antoine Selosse, one of the initiators of the Via Sancti Martini (In the footsteps of Saint Martin), also mentions on his Facebook page, by displaying a photo of Pope Leo XIV and a representation of the bishop of Tours, a wink of history: “It is in this city that Martin spent his childhood,” he explains, “and his father, military tribune, resided there. »What a crossroads!

Marry

We will also be able to remember from the first speech of Pope Leo XIV the testimony of his Marian devotion. By recalling that May 8 commemorates the feast of Notre-Dame de Pompeii, he said: “Our mother Marie always wants to walk with us, staying close, helping us with her intercession and her love. “Then he recited, before giving his blessing, a Ave Maria In Italian, thus putting his pontificate under the protection of that which was, as a hymn says, “the first on the way”.

It is “a historical election, a breath of continuity. In Lourdes, emotion is lively in the face of the arrival of the first American pope, fervent of the Virgin Mary, “said Father Michel Daubanes, rector of the Sanctuary Notre-Dame de Lourdes. And the pilgrims were sensitive to the fact that the first trip of the Pope, Saturday May 10, 2025, took place at the Marian sanctuary of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Consil, in Genazzano (about fifty kilometers from Rome), entrusted to Augustinian religious. In 2023, when he was cardinal, he had already come to this sanctuary, raised to the rank of minor basilica by Léon XIII.

“Avanti!” »»

From the Pope’s first speech, I will quote two sentences: “We are all in the hands of God. So, fearless, united in hand with God and between us, let’s move on! We are disciples of Christ. Christ precedes us! “And:” We can all walk together towards this homeland to which God has prepared us. That allusions to this sacred march that is the pilgrimage of life!

“” Avantlet’s move on! “: An exhortation that recalls the rallying cry of pilgrims of Saint Jacques,” Ultreia! ». Pilgrims who have undoubtedly been also receptive at the invitation to build bridges (which is the proper meaning of the term “pontiff”, from Latin pontifus or “bridges builder”), since the arches thrown between two shores are, literally as in the figurative sense, one of the elements of architecture which allows paths to exist.

Hope pilgrims

Finally, let us recall that the election of the new pope takes place during the Jubilee of Rome, which has the theme “Pilgrim of Esperance”. “On this occasion, exactly one month after this election, explain Anthony Grouard and Anne-Laure Timmel, we will set off to connect, in Relais pedestris, the Saint-Pierre cathedral of Nantes at the Saint-Pierre Basilica of Rome, taking the Via Ligeria Then there Via Francigena. We should be thirty on arrival in Rome on September 8, 2025, and we are already registered at the papal hearing! »»

Just before the election of the new sovereign pontiff, a journalist came to the Camino museum, at Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire) to ask the pilgrims who were preparing to take the road what they expected from the next pope. Among their wishes, we will remember the desire for peace, openness, humility, dynamism and the missionary dimension.

With the roadmap given in his first speech, let us bet that Pope Léon XIV will have been able to give them the courage to follow their path, on terrestrial roads and on those, just as winding, of their existence!