There’s no way to know how many miles St. Francis of Assisi walked during his lifetime. But fond as he was of the virtue of humility, his own two feet were surely a favored means of transportation. And now a new pilgrimage route in his honor, the Camino de San Francisco — inspired by the historic mission trails of California, and coinciding with the Jubilee Year of St. Francis — has been founded, allowing pilgrims to follow spiritually in the saint’s footsteps. The route Stretching from Mission San Rafael Arcángel to Mission Dolores in San Francisco, the 24.56 miles of streets, paths and trails are broken into four segments, so a potential journey can be calibrated. Father Christopher Iwancio — a Capuchin Franciscan friar and executive director of Modern Catholic Pilgrim, an organization describing its work as “to prepare pilgrims, get them to holy sites in the United States, and expand a hospitality network to care for those pilgrims as they journey” — had the idea for the Camino de San Francisco after visiting San Antonio in Texas. As he walked the El Camino de San Antonio Missions, he learned of its partnership with Spain’s famous Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Pilgrims who walk the San Antonio route — and obtain a stamp from each mission in their passport, paired with a distance certificate — can be awarded 30 kilometers credit towards the Camino de Santiago de Compostela’s English route, the Camino Ingles.

“It made me think of the missions in California,” said Father Iwancio.

Brainstorming with Christian Clifford, a historian and author of Pilgrimage: In Search of the Real California Missions, and with support from Peter Marlow in the communications office of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, the route was soon formulated.

“We looked at the distances between the caminos and thought, what would make sense? What would be easy, to have a good experience?” remembered Father Iwancio. “It was like, ‘Oh, San Francisco — that makes sense….’”

From OSV News