The pilgrimage is an old tradition in the Catholic Church. It’s a journey of faith, often through difficult lands, to a place of spiritual significance. Many of the most famous pilgrimage places have been sites where saints have experienced apparitions of God, or have done miraculous deeds. There is something of the resonance of these events still alive in these places.

Other sites have a special place in our own understanding of the world, one that might not have the same historical basis, but still give us a sense of connection with God. These are often personal places, significant because they are part of our own stories.

In July, Australia will become a destination for pilgrims from all parts of the globe. What do we have in the way of sacred sites to offer them?

Australian Catholics has asked a range of Catholics from around Australia about their own places of pilgrimage. In this feature, a number of them write about places where they have found a closer connection to God.

Sr Patty Fawkner, Good Samaritan Sisters

Like most Australians I cling to the coast. Yet there is something about the Australian desert that continues to lure me. I’ve crossed the Tanami Desert and camped on the edge of the Simpson Desert. I’ve made a 30-day retreat in the desert area of Santa Teresa.

The desert is a metaphor for making that inner journey from the edge and what is superficial in my life. The desert invites me to move beyond facades and distractions to find my true self, a self that is loved by a wild, unnameable God—a God who is mirrored in the majesty and beauty of our ancient land.

Grant Morgan, writer and teacher

Every Easter Sunday I used to run to the memorial cross on top of Mt Macedon in Victoria; an endeavour of exhaustion and euphoria.

One year, when it was particularly cold, the drizzle stopped falling and started floating. It was snowing. Behind, a line of black footprints, and ahead, the road curved like a white carpet. Nearing the summit a mob of kangaroos bounded. Finally, at the top a shroud of cloud hushed the land. Is anybody there? I wondered. And a drop of water fell.

Sr Helen Barnes, author The Cross: An Australian Journey

Mary MacKillop Place is my choice for a pilgrimage. In the Chapel at Mount St North Sydney pilgrims can kneel to pray at the tomb where Mary is buried.

Other countries have many saints but Mary MacKillop is saint for Australia. People from all walks of life and backgrounds are visitors to this sacred site.

I find great peace there. It reminds me that holiness is possible despite our human fragility. Mary MacKillop said ‘yes’ to what she saw as God’s will for her and her life mission was blessed.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge, Archdiocese of Canberra

Just outside Rome, high in the hills beyond Subiaco, there lies the cave where St Benedict began, known as the Sacro Speco. I have sat in there and thought of it as the womb of Europe.

In a time of chaos, Benedict went into the cave as a solitary and a new civilisation was born. The drama of the location, the historical resonance of the shrine, as well as its artistic heritage and its sense of holiness make the Sacro Speco for me one of the greatest and most moving places of pilgrimage.

Benita De Vincentiis, Darwin World Youth Day Coordinator

I often visit Kakadu National Park. It is a special place. It has beauty. It has life. It has culture. Stories are written on its rock walls.

The Gagudju people still live and work there. For me it is a pilgrimage place. It has opened my heart and mind to the first peoples of our nation. I have seen their place, walked their country, heard their stories, felt their spirit.

In Kakadu, I have sat, I have contemplated and I have felt the incredible work of God in our lives and in our country.

Bishop Greg O’Kelly SJ, Diocese of Adelaide

There are two places that I visit as personally sacred to me.

The first is the crypt under St Aloysius Church at Sevenhill, South Australia. Crypts of this European nature are very rare in Australia. There are about forty Jesuit Fathers and Brothers buried there. The first Jesuits from Australia were Austrian, landing here in 1848. Standing in the crypt, among these good men, I feel humbled to be part of such a body of companions.

The second place very dear to me is the chapel in Franklin Street, where Blessed Mary MacKillop was excommunicated. The little window which looks out from the Sisters’ dormitory down into the chapel, and through which Mary looked as she wrote her letters in the early days of the Josephites, gives one an uncanny feeling of the closeness of holiness to our lives in ordinary surroundings. Thoughts of her heroic nature, initiative and imagination, her sacrifice and dedication to Christ, and all for others, and knowing that such a misguided act could be performed upon such a holy person, creates its own stirrings of emotions and reflection.

Anne Dooley, Marist Lay Partnership Coordinator

I was on a pilgrimage in 2007 to the South of France to visit the places where Marcellin Champagnat, founder of the Marist Brothers, began his dream. As we approached St Chamond, the water seemed very significant—rain, rivers, snow. Coming from Australia in drought, this was a stark contrast to our parched countryside.

This water source flows directly through the Hermitage, which was built by Marcellin and his early Brothers. It is a wonderful metaphor for ‘drinking the water of everlasting life’. The Hermitage is a rich place—fertile, green, lush, fresh, alive. We were to experience deep personal nourishment over the following days in our journey

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