Chairman's Report for 2005
| The following report was delivered at the Confraternity's AGM on 28th January 2006, and will be published in a forthcoming Bulletin. You may quote reasonable extracts without permission, though we would appreciate an acknowledgement. For more substantial use, please contact the Secretary. |
In October 2005 a delegation from the Confraternity attended the seventh International Congress of the Jacobean Associations of Spain, in Ponferrada, organized this time by the Amigos del Camino de Santiago de El Bierzo, who have been our partners for so many years in the Refugio Gaucelmo at Rabanal. At the closing gala dinner, it was my honour to receive on behalf of the Confraternity this fine diploma, which is signed by the Presidents both of the Federacion Espanola de Asociaciones de Amigos del Camino de Santiago, and of the El Bierzo Amigos. The wording, it seems to me, is rather significant, and I would like to share it with you: “The Spanish Federation of Associations of Friends of the Camino de Santiago, in the setting of the VII International Congress of Jacobean Associations acknowledges the merit of, and gives thanks for the work undertaken by the Confraternity of Saint James, of London, in creating and sustaining as Albergues for Jacobean pilgrims “Gaucelmo”, of Rabanal del Camino, and Miraz.”
Here, if it were needed, is the assurance the Confraternity may have sought, that our discernment that the time was right for the launch of a second Refugio project, and its final focussing down on the village of Miraz in Galicia, is in no way to detract from the indissoluble bonds of service and affection that we have forged at Rabanal. Here, if it were needed, is the encouragement for our pioneers of the Miraz project, that our longstanding partners in the work at Rabanal fully support our new work, and consider the fledgling project worthy of citing alongside the Gaucelmo project in this tribute they pay us. In Ponferrada, we made it clear to our co-workers in El Bierzo, and in all the Spanish Associations, how much the tribute means to us, and I share it with you now because it sums up so much of what we have tried to do this last year.
A year ago, when we spoke about the New Refuge Project, several options were still open: the Via de la Plata, the various Northern routes, even locations outside Spain. Only the Vézelay route had been ruled out, as it had become clear that its more pressing need was for Confraternity members to help as hospitaliers at Corbigny and Sorges rather than to create our own new Refuge there. So, how did we come to settle on Miraz, on the Ruta de la Costa, as it swings inland into the Diocese of Lugo? You can hear from Maureen and Keith Young, who came forward to be for the New Refuge something of what Walter and Mary Ivens had been for the foundation at Rabanal, how detailed criteria were drawn up and the various options painstakingly compared with them. For myself, I prefer to say that St James led us to Miraz, through the intermediary of an old friend in the Diocese of Lugo, who showed to Laurie Dennett a number of villages where the presbytery was now vacant, among them Miraz, where the Rector had already been sometimes receiving pilgrims. Miraz filled a long gap for pilgrims between Baamonde and the Cistercian monastery at Sobrado. And its church was dedicated to St James: what more guidance did we need?
So, an exchange of letters took place in which the Bishop of Lugo, Fray José Gomez Gonzalez, granted us use of the building. An advance party went out to Miraz, and found pilgrims already on the doorstep. Clearly, we had to receive them. So a rota of hospitaleros was hastily assembled, co-ordinated by Alan Cutbush, and pilgrims have been received throughout the summer: almost a thousand of them. Bunks (of Rabanal standard) were installed, and the hospitaleros were also of Rabanal standard. The first workshop for prospective Miraz hospitaleros is about to be held in Colin Jones’s Worcestershire parish on 25th February, the feast of Blessed Avertanus, who died while on pilgrimage to Rome. An immense amount of work still remains to be done at Miraz, to transform the building from its present very provisional state. But the work of fundraising began as suddenly and spontaneously as the work of hospitality, when Ian Mackey ran the Edinburgh Marathon in Galician gaitero costume. An enthusiastic group of fundraisers, led by Angelika Schneider until her move to Ireland, was soon at work. I have in the past made use of three themes from the Pastoral Letter of the Archbishop of Santiago, Don Julian Barrio Barrio, for the last Jubilee Year: Desiring, Giving and Jubilating. Our desire for a new Refuge has been abundantly fulfilled: our giving must continue to bring it to a jubilatory fruition. In the words of the Galician troubadour Martin Codax (slightly adapted):
E miraremos las ondas
E miraremos Miraz.
Reflecting on giving, as always I must thank those whom we have entrusted to perform specific functions in the Confraternity, to make concrete our giving. My Vice-Chairman, Alison Raju, is known on the Camino as the pilgrim with two rucksacs. Now she can be known as the hospitalera with two refugios, having served at both Rabanal and Miraz this year. Our wise and lucid Treasurer, Tony Ward, will shortly be presenting our accounts to you. I thank all our Trustees: Jane Bradshaw, Gosia Brykczynska, Paul Graham, Gerry Greene (who stepped down during the year), Revd Colin Jones, Mary Moseley, Graeme Taylor (co-opted to succeed Gerry Greene as Scottish representative), and Revd Ricky Yates. The ever-delightful trio to be found on a regular basis in our Offices: Marion Marples, Alison Thorp and Christine Pleasants, and all the volunteers who assist them there. Marion’s fame of course is known on every continent as an authority on the pilgrimage, and the American Friends of the Camino have asked to have her to talk at their conference this year in Boulder, Colorado. Our Subcommittees for Rabanal and for Miraz, from whom you will shortly be hearing in more detail. A special word of thanks for Paul Graham, stepping down from chairing the Rabanal Committee,where he has been succeeded by Cristina and Paul Spink. Cristina and Paul are also a living example of the truth that there must be no contradiction between our commitments to Rabanal and to Miraz. They were among the hospitaleros in Miraz this last season, and they were there when those of us who had been to the Ponferrada conference went to Miraz for a delightful meeting with the village notables, to which Cristina and Paul (not least by their linguistic skills) contributed greatly. Thanks as always to those who so devotedly manage our Library, and our Slide Library, Howard Nelson and John Hatfield, and to Rosemary Wells, who manages our Gift Aid. Howard also continues to manage our Website, which continues its success story with 49,000 “hits” in 2005. I hope that you have all logged on to it since June, when it was beautifully redesigned by Piers Nicholson. Thanks to Gosia Brykczynska, who edits our Bulletin, and is assisted by James Hatts, John Revell and a valiant team of stuffers every quarter. Finally, what is a Confraternity if it cannot clothe its members with sweat-shirts and T-shirts ? For this essential task, my thanks to Ann Truman.
Another occasion for jubilating during the past year was the World Youth Day in Cologne in August 2005. This had been planned, and would have been presided over, by the late Pope John-Paul II, so aptly called the Pilgrim Pope. Providence dictated that by August we had a new Pope, Benedict XVI, whose vestments bedecked with scallop shells we had admired , and whose coat of arms is full of pilgrim references : not only the scallop but also the penitent bear enlisted to assist St Corbinian in carrying his pack on pilgrimage to Rome. The Deutsche Sankt Jakobus Gesellschaft , of Aachen, had the happy idea of putting on a display about the Compostellan pilgrimage for the participants in World Youth Day, and invited the Confraternity to be part of it. And so it was that Marion Marples, Gosia Brykczynska, Liz Keay and myself, all of us “of a certain age” went to Cologne masquerading as young people, enjoyed the hospitality of our German friends, and saw something of their work of waymarking the German routes to Santiago.
I recently, on a visit to Hay-on-Wye, came across a copy of “Literary Distractions” by Ronald Knox, one of the great Christian writers in English of the 20th Century, containing his essay “Going on Pilgrimage”. Of course I bought it – only to find, on returning home, that I already had it. So this copy is going to the Library. I am struck by his description “A pilgrim is a sightseer endowed with a kind of second sight”. One of the tasks we perform as a Confraternity is to foster that second sight. We do that before the pilgrimage to a certain extent, at our Practical Pilgrim Days: five of them coming up in the next 2 months, in Nottingham, London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Thornbury. If you are intending to make the pilgrimage, do come to one of them. If you have already made the pilgrimage, do come to as many of them as you can to inspire and advise new pilgrims.
We are also now fostering that second sight in pilgrims after their return. In 2004 we had a day for returned pilgrims in the Revd Ricky Yates’s parish. In 2005 we had a very successful weekend retreat for returned pilgrims at Ampleforth Abbey, led by my namesake Fr Benjamin Griffiths. We hope to continue this pattern of alternating day and weekend events in the years to come.
“A pilgrim is a sightseer endowed with a kind of second sight”. I am reminded of the anonymous poem painted on the wall alongside the Camino outside Najera, the one that begins “Polvo, barro, sol y lluvia es Camino de Santiago”. It goes on to ask:
“Pilgrim, who calls you ?
What hidden force pulls you ?
Neither the people of the way
Nor the rustic customs.
It is not history and culture,
It is not the cock of La Calzada,
It is not the palace of Gaudi,
It is not the castle of Ponferrada.
I see everything as I pass,
And it is a joy to see everything,
But I feel the voice which calls me
Far more deeply.”
May that voice call us ever more deeply in the year ahead. May all that we see and jubilate in 2006 be enriched with that second sight.
William Griffiths