Death of a pilgrim

[Rosina Lila]

This are the facts as reported by El Diario de Navarra
(www.diariodenavarra.es), O Globo (www.oglobo.br), and the various Brasilian
Camino-related websites:
Antonio Jorge Ferreira, 48, a Portuguese national residing in Brasil for more
than twenty years, and a banker by profession, left Rio de Janeiro on January
11 on his way to Spain to undertake his third pilgrimage to Santiago.
As he had done in his two previous pilgrimages, he made arrangements with his
wife of 17 years,  Vanda Limongi, a Brasilian psychologist, to call home at
least twice a week.
Upon arrival in Madrid instead of flying to Pamplona he flew to Vitoria
because of climate difficulties.  In Vitoria he tried to make a collect call
to his home in Rio which did not go through.  This appears to be the last
attempted communication from him. From Vitoria he took a bus to Pamplona and
thence a taxi to SJPP where he spent the night; the next day he started out
for Valcarlos on the Napoleon route, and then he disappeared.
After weeks of not hearing from him, and after many phone calls to various
sites in Spain, and to the Spanish consulate in Rio and the Brasilian embassy
in Spain, his
wife went to northern Spain herself to look for him and travelled thousands
of kilometers, on and around the French Way, looking for news of her husband.
. She went to SJPP, Valcarlos, Roncesvalles, Burguete and Torres del Rio.
Both French and Spaniard authorities assisted in the search using helicopters
and winter equipment, without success.
Despairing of finding traces of her husband's movements because of the snow
conditions, Vanda Limongi was readying to board a plane in Santiago de
Compostela to return to Rio, on  March 6, when the Guardia Civil notified her
that some mountaineers had turned over to the police a bag that they had
found on the Pyrenees, near the French border. The bag contained some
clothes, a bible, and a diary containing indications of the pilgrim's
whereabouts until then.
Vanda Limogi returned to Pamplona and continued the search intending, if
necessary, to stay in the environs until the melting of the snow.  A
Portuguese national living in Bayona, Eusebio Alves Da-Cunha, who had been
helping in the search, decided to traverse, again,  the 22 kilometers between
SJPP and Roncesvalles, and on the 13th of March he spotted the body lying at
the bottom of a steep ravine. The Guardia Civil went to the site, Collado de
Bantarte, on all-terrain vehicles and retrieved the body.
Unlike earlier reports, all the credit cards, money and documents of the
pilgrim were contained on a fanny-pack that he was wearing.  the only thing
missing was a video camera.
His wife speculated that he might have left his backpack behind to climb a
peak so that he could videotape the scenery, and that he might then have
fallen accidentally.
The fall is estimated to have been between 30 and 40 meters, and the video
camera is presumed to be somewhere underneath the snow.
An autopsy was performed at the Navarrese Institute of Legal Medicine of the
Hospital of Navarra, and it was determined that the death was the direct
result of a fall.
The pilgrim had engaged in a series of financial transactions before leaving
Rio but, his wife explained, he had done so only in anticipation of his
expected five-week absence from his job as manager of the Abn Real Bank in
Rio.
Masses for the repose of the pilgrim's soul were held at Vitoria, SJPP,
Roncesvalles and  Torres del Rio before the body was repatriated to Brasil
for burial.
Vanda Limoges has declared her intention to return to the site where her
husband's body was found and place a Cross there in his memory; she also
intends to complete her husband's pilgrimage herself.
Sadly, and with heart-felt prayers,
Rosina