IT is widely expected that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland will formally withdraw its centuries-long hostility to pilgrimage this week. The next step of turning words into action finds the Kirk well placed to help make Scotland a great pilgrimage destination. Those who go on the Camino, the great pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain can often stay in converted churches where they can eat, sleep, and drink for about €10 a night. This kind of accommodation is lacking in Scotland. However, the Kirk, with church buildings in nearly every village in Scotland, can welcome pilgrims with “camping-in-church “or “champing” as it is known.
July 5, 2018 is the 700th anniversary of the consecration of the great cathedral in St Andrews, containing the relics of St Andrew, apostle and patron saint of Scotland, which took place in the presence of Robert the Bruce. When better to have “champing” up and running than for those pilgrims arriving in St Andrews next year? And where better to pioneer “champing” than on St Margaret’s Way, the spectacular pilgrim route from Edinburgh to St Andrews?
Amid the brouhaha of the Kirk’s new stance it should not be forgotten that many of its members have informally been the backbone of pilgrimage in Scotland for the last 50 years or more. There were men like the Reverend George MacLeod who rescued Iona and turned it into a flourishing religious centre. Among many others, there was also the Rev Andrew Patterson, a leading inspiration for the Whithorn Way to honour St Ninian. He was strongly ecumenical and very supportive to me when I started the Way of St Andrews, the lay Roman Catholic revival of the ancient pilgrimage to St Andrews, sometimes known as “The Little Camino”.
Together we researched an ancient pilgrimage path from Earlsferry to St Andrews. Finding it badly overgrown and boggy he made contact with an old friend, who happened to be Kenny Macaskill, then Cabinet Secretary for Justice. Within a week there was a criminal justice team clearing and draining a two-mile section. So now pilgrims completing the last section can arrive in St Andrews unbloodied and dry-shod. Another hurrah for the Kirk.
Hugh Lockhart,
Secretary, the Way of Saint Andrews , 10 London Street, Edinburgh.
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