Marco Carvalho
A group of local pilgrims will travel to the Vatican next summer to cross the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica. Led by Father Daniel Ribeiro, the Holy Year pilgrimage is not restricted to Italy and the Holy See alone. Participants will retrace Saint Paul’s steps in Asia Minor and visit the world of a modern-day saint, Saint John Paul II.
The Catholic Church across the world is celebrating the Jubilee Year, a period of extraordinary grace, conducive to conversion, pilgrimage and charity observed every 25 years. This celebration has started this year and will culminate on January 6th 2026. Pope Francis invites Catholics worldwide to strengthen their faith, perform works of mercy and promote peace, justice and solidarity, in exchange for the remission of the temporal punishment, due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven. To obtain a plenary indulgence, one must undertake a pious pilgrimage to a Sacred Site or to cross one of the Holy Doors that were opened by the supreme pontiff last December.
That’s exactly what Father Daniel Ribeiro, parochial vicar of the Cathedral of the Nativity Our Lady, is proposing to the Portuguese-speaking Catholics of Macau. The Brazilian priest will lead a pilgrimage to Turkey, Poland and Italy in mid-July. The religious expedition will reach its climax in Rome, where the local pilgrims will cross one of the four Holy Doors located in the city: “The ultimate purpose of the pilgrimage and the participants main goal is to go through the Holy Door. However, as Rome is expected to attract millions of visitors throughout this year, we will include other places in our journey”, the Dehonian missionary told “O Clarim”. “We will embark on a pilgrimage with a broader itinerary that does not include only Rome, for the reasons I mentioned. We’re going to stay in Rome just for two days, with one purpose and one purpose only. Our main aim is to go through the Holy Door. No visits to museums or similar initiatives are planned”, Father Ribeiro adds.
Retracing the footsteps of Saint Paul
The Holy Door is the most important symbol of the Jubilee Year, but the large influx of tourists expected in the Italian capital led Father Daniel Ribeiro and the pilgrimage organizers to rethink the religious expedition and aim for something more. A pilgrimage is an opportunity for spiritual renewal and growth in personal faith. Apart from visiting Italy, the group of local pilgrims – who will also be joined by Portuguese and Brazilian Catholics – will also retrace the footsteps of Saint Paul’s first apostolic journey in Asia Minor and visit the world of a modern-day saint, Pope John Paul II: ‘The pilgrimage leaves Hong Kong on July, 18th and the group will return to Macau on August, 1st.Open to pilgrims of all ages, this journey is aimed primarily at Portuguese-speaking Catholics. Our first stop will be in Turkey, where we will recreate Saint Paul’s first missionary journey. My aim was to imbue the first leg of our pilgrimage with a biblical perspective, based on the New Testament and the Letters that Saint Paul wrote. I chose to retrace the footsteps of Saint Paul and during the first seven days of our journey, we will visit well-known biblical places such as Antioch, Ephesus, Smyrna, Iconium and Lystra”, the parochial vicar of the Cathedral Church explains.
Over the course of a week, the pilgrims will visit several places referenced in the Bible and mentioned by St Paul in his Epistles. The programme conceived by Father Daniel Ribeiro features visits to the House of the Virgin Mary, in present-day Smyrna, the city where Our Lady reportedly lived for the remainder of her earthly life. The group will also visit Mount Staurin – where Saint Paul Preached – and the village of Lystra, where the thaumaturge performed one of the greatest miracles attributed to him. Asia Minor, the Brazilian missionary recalls, has a very important place in the history of Christianity. The region played a crucial role in the establishment of the Church in the early days, Father Daniel Ribeiro claims: “Later in the year, we will celebrate the 2025th anniversary of the birth of Jesus. This journey is, therefore, an opportunity for us to visit places that were and still are very relevant for the Catholic faith. Places where Catholicism developed after Christ resurrected and that are located in the region that we now know as Asia Minor. It was precisely in this region that Saint Paul carried out his mission to the Gentiles,’ the Dehonian priest emphasizes.
Saint John Paul II, pilgrim of peace
After the early Church traditions, contemporary testimonies of faith. On the eighth day of the expedition, the group led by Father Daniel Ribeiro will travel from Istanbul to Kraków, the city where Karol Wojtyla was ordained a priest and where he lived from 1964 to 1978, serving first as an auxiliary bishop and later as the archbishop. The Polish pontiff, canonized by Pope Francis in 2014, is the leading reference of the second leg of the pilgrimage. In Poland, the group of pilgrims will visit Wadowice, the small town where Saint John Paul II was born, but also the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where Saint Maximilian Kolbe and Saint Edith Stein were martyred: ‘In Poland, we are planning on visiting some of the places where Saint John Paul II lived and where Saint Maximilian Kolbe lived. Our plans also include a visit to Auschwitz, where Judith Stein and Saint Maximilian Kolbe became martyrs,’ the parochial vicar of the Cathedral Church explains. “We have included Poland in our pilgrimage because of Saint John Paul II. John Paul II revitalized the Jubilee celebrations and we want to visit some of the places where he lived. It’s also important to emphasize the importance that Saint John Paul II has had in the recent history of the Church. It’s our main motivation to visit the places where he lived”, Father Ribeiro adds.
In Rome, the pilgrimage will reach its climax on the fourteenth day. In its brief sojourn in the Italian capital, the group will pass through the Holy Door at Saint Peter’s Basilica. Rome, however, is not the only place that the pilgrims will visit in Italy. Two days before returning to Macau, the caravan will heat to Assisi: “Next year, the Church will celebrate the 800th anniversary of the death of Saint Francis of Assisi and we realized that it would be interesting to visit Assisi, the city of Saint Francis”, the Dehonian priest elucidates. “The pilgrimage is open to everyone, but it’s mainly aimed at the Portuguese-speaking community. We will communicate and pray in Portuguese. So far, families, young people and older people alike have shown interest in taking part in this pilgrimage. Some of the participants, hailing both from Brazil and from Portugal, will only join the group only in Europe. It’s a spiritual endeavor open to anyone”, Father Daniel Ribeiro concludes.
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