Outsize Crop Of Pilgrims For Holy Year

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 5, 9 October 1950, Page 4

Outsize Crop Of Pilgrims For Holy Year

The Holy Year has brought to Rome an outsize crop of odd and unusual pilgrims. They have travelled by all kinds of * strange transport, ranging from a tub to a penny-farthing, bicycks and a Roman chariot, in fulfilment of strange vows and in picturesque or unusual*Costumes. They have brought for Pope Pius X.II a variety of strange gifts, ranging from a miner’s lamp to a shark's tooth.

Of those who chose strange transport perhaps the most unusual was the bearded philosopher Jean Tichelles, from Alsace. He walked to Rome pulling a tub on wheels which served as his shelter nd home. On the tub, this new ’Diogenes” had printed the slogan “I am nothing, I want nothing, I am content with nothing.” An even greater stir was caused by the “Galloping Countess,” Elena Von Honenau, who rode across Europe on a dapple-grey mare, “La Bella Gislea,” on her Holy Year visit to the Pope. Booted and spurred, the bronzed Amazon countess rode into Saint Peter’s Square in April at the end of a 1000-mile, seven-week-long horseback pilgrimage from Germany. Innumerable pilgrims came to Rome by bicycle, but no one else chose such an ancient velocipede as 29-year-old Guy Evangelista, of Liverpool, England. This red-beard-ed artist-pilgrim travelled for -three months across France ahjgl Italy on his grandfather's “penny-farthing” “boneshaker” to gain the Holy Year indulgence. Oldest cycling pilgrim mustTiave been Mademoiselle Henriette Darricades, from Salies, in the French Pyrenees, whose 60 years did not deter her from a 58-day cycle journey to Rome.

Bath-Chair Travellers Many an invalid came to Rome by bath-chair, a 26-year-old para lysed Frenchman, Louis Potigny, oX Vigneux-Sur-Seine, travelled from Paris in a hand-propelled bathchair on behalf of the French Paralytics’ Association. An Italian cripple who lost both legs in a train accident made the pilgrimage in a chair drawn by three dogs. Spanish students made one of the most energetic pilgrimages. Twelve of them paddled 550 miles across the Mediterranean in three frail canoes to be received by the Pope in St. Peter’s Basilica.

More than 1000 pilgrims came on foot to Rome from all over Europe. One, Matthias Girst, walked from his home in Luxembourg in gratitude for his miraculous cure from paralysis at Lourdes four years ago. An Italian family walked 100 miles pushing their little boy in a perambulator in the hope that the Pope’s blessing would heal him from a malformation of the legs. A South Italian farmer, Michele Ca puccilli, walked 40 miles barefoot beai'ing on his shoulders a heavy wooden cross. The English poetphilosopher, Frederick KendallHusband, walked from Birmingham dressed in a faded London policeman’s tunic and striped football jersey, paying his way with mouthorgan renderings of Beethoven. There is a variety of costumes and dress to be seen in the square outside St. Peter’s. Swiss peasants in starched blouses and lace head dresses, African Negroes in tribal costume, Indian women in flowing saris, Siciilian “Sontadini” in col ourful national dress —they are ad to be seen among the crowds pouring through the great doors of the basilica.

One of the most colourful pilgrimages of the year*was that of a troop of 250 Scottish Boy Scouts, who marched with swinging kilts into St. Peter’s to the sound of bagpipes and drums.