[Gocamino] Pilgrimages network

[Donald Schell]

Rosina,

(apologies for double-posting this.  I meant to reply to you on the 
list and didn't notice the address until after I'd sent it).

> Besides Santiago, the towns that will participate in the cooperative 
> effort
> will be Altotting in Germany, Czestoch in Poland, Fatima in Portugal, 
> Loreto in
> Italy, the island of Patmos in Greece and Lourdes in France.
> ...
> Outside of Fatima, Lourdes and Loreto I do not know anything about the 
> other
> places.  Is anyone here familiar with such places and their pilgrimage
> attraction?


Thank you for your wonderful account of your first experience of the 
Camino.

Of the places you mention, Patmos is one I know a little about.  The 
Book of Revelation in the New Testament was written on Patmos by one 
John (traditionally identified as the same John who wrote the Gospel, 
though the Gospel's language and theology are quite different).  There 
distinct traditions about 'John,' and one is that the author of Gospel, 
the three Epistles, and the Book of Revelation had the visions he wrote 
about on Patmos and died there.  The other tradition identifies Ephesus 
as the place where the Gospel writer lived until his death.

There is a very old Orthodox monastery on the peak of the island.  I 
believe it includes within its walls the cave which is the traditional 
site of John's revelatioins.  I've never visited but have heard Bishop 
Kallistos Ware talk of it.  He was an Anglican scholar of early church 
and Orthodox theology who became Greek Orthodox and an Orthodox priest. 
  When I met him in 1971, he was an Oxford professor of theology (I 
don't know if he still teaches), and a popular and accessible writer on 
Orthodox theology.  This was before he'd been consecrated a bishop.

At that time he was teaching half the year at Oxford and spending the 
other half year as an ordinary member of Patmos'  ancient monastic 
community where most of his brothers were men who had grown up in the 
fishing village on the island.  When visitors landed on the island and 
climbed up to the monastery, Fr. Kallistos (native English speaker and 
good in a couple of other languages too, I think) was the community's 
designated guide.  All the pilgrims and tourists had come in by boat, 
at that time only private or chartered boats.  He had some amusing 
stories of wealthy 'experts' taking their friends on tour who didn't 
quite know what to make of the monk with the odd Anglo-Greco accent who 
seemed to know as much as they did.  A German lady taking a group of 
friends for a Mediterranean tour on her substantial yacht complimented 
Kallistos on his English.  'Pretty good for a Greek,' she said, 'though 
you make certain mistakes in grammar.'

With the great increase of European travel, tourism and interest in 
pilgrimage in the intervening thirty plus years, I don't know what 
Patmos has become, but the destination would still be the monastery and 
its cave of the Apocalypse.

love,
donald

On Mar 13, 2005, at 7:40 AM, Blaroli at aol.com wrote: