HCPT Easter Pilgrimage underway

HCPT Mass 2019. Image: Durand

HCPT Lourdes Cycle 2023 arrived in Lourdes on Good Friday in time for the first arrivals of groups for this year's HCPT Easter Pilgrimage.

The final stretch for the cycle team of 21 was 75 miles and they were clapped on their arrival after covering more than 500 miles. The start off point was Versailles on Saturday, 1 April, in wind and the rain!

On Saturday the first groups arrive after weeks of preparations, training days, fund-raising and family events where children meet everyone in their group.

Around 2,340 people - from England, Scotland and Wales - are travelling with HCPT. Another 1,000 are coming from sister organisations in Ireland, Belgium, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, the West Indies and the USA. Nearly 1,000 disabled and disadvantaged children and young people are travelling.

The week-long pilgrimage holiday will be the biggest since the Covid pandemic halted trips for most groups for three years. And it is a youthful pilgrimage with more than half the participants under the age of 30. Faith formation and young people engaged with reaching out to and learning from the vulnerable are part of the HCPT experience.

Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool will be the main celebrant at the Trust Mass next Thursday, where all the pilgrimage gathers. The Merseyside region is taking the lead on liturgy under the theme 'The Good Shepherd'. Music will be led by Dr Marie Giles, with musicians and singers from Merseyside. Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh in Scotland (HCPT's president) will be there too and eight other bishops from England, Scotland, Ireland, and the USA.

Memorable group Masses will be held at such chapels as the Sheepfold, St Gabriel's and Mater Misericordiae, and groups undertake the Stations of the Cross by the shimmering River Gave. The Torchlight Procession is another favourite in the week. HCPT's favourite music such as 'As I kneel before you' and 'Sing it in the Valleys' will be heard throughout the town.

Groups can be seen moving through the Grotto at all times. They wear bright and distinctive colours so that groups can spot their own members easily at a distance and in crowds, as well as heighten fun and group solidarity for the children. Children themselves are always inspired when they visit the prison cell where St Bernadette lived at the time of the apparitions in 1858, and discover that she was a sickly uneducated girl from perhaps the town's poorest family.

The Easter pilgrimage of HCPT (Hosanna House and Children's Pilgrimage Trust) is the start of a busy year for the charity, which also offers pilgrimages to Hosanna House, HCPT's retreat centre in the hills above Lourdes, from May to October. Its first Easter pilgrimage was in 1956.

Livestreams - particularly of Thursday's Trust Mass - and daily news will be available at: www.hcpt.org.uk/easter-2023.