Pope invited to travel to Santiago de Compostela, with a curious gift

The Archbishop of Santiago and the President of Galicia visited Francisco to thank him for extending the Compostela Jubilee Year.

This was to last all of 2021, but because of the pandemic, the Pope allowed all of 2022 to also last to facilitate the arrival of pilgrims.

They gave him typical sweets from Santiago, the so-called “Piedras”, made of chocolate and almonds.

Also, this heavy symbol of the Camino, the shell that guides pilgrims along the Route to Compostela.

“This is what is put in the streets to point the way on the ground, at crossroads and in the streets of Santiago and elsewhere.”

Of course, the archbishop and the Galician president took the opportunity to invite Francis to visit Compostela, as did John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

MONS. JULIÁN BARRIO
Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela
“The Camino de Santiago is a spiritual route. We cannot forget this. A spiritual route for so many people that I think are not resigned to the spirit being dampened by that situation of immanence and by that situation of loss of the meaning of life ”.

The meeting was very affectionate. Francisco recalled that many of the Spaniards who emigrated to Argentina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were Galicians and he even told them which streets in Buenos Aires they were seen most often on.

The Camino de Santiago maintains the charm of pure pilgrimage, but the pandemic has slowed the flow of people visiting the apostle’s tomb.

In fact, if in 2019 the pilgrims reached 350,000, in the first three months of 2021 they were only 300.

Javier Romero/ Romerepots.com