I spent the morning reading Pope Francis’s “Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025.” Despite having spent the better part of the past three months walking across Italy during this Jubilee year, including a short visit to Roma, I’d never bothered to review the originating decree. Perhaps I just assumed it would be the religious equivalent of legalese, using far too many words to articulate a straightforward concept in an entirely convoluted fashion. I should have known better, given that this came from Francis.
Pilgrims on the Camino are familiar with the concept of a Holy Year. In the case of Santiago, it’s when Saint James’s Day falls on a Sunday. Traditionally, those making the pilgrimage in a Holy Year have the opportunity to earn a plenary indulgence, a remission of temporal punishment for all sins committed up to that point. In Roma, the Holy Year is known as the Jubilee, first celebrated in 1299, and then every 50 years, and eventually every 25. At least, those are the “Ordinary” Jubilees, but “Extraordinary” ones have been known to pop up every once in a while.
The theme that Francis chose for the 2025 Jubilee is “Pellegrini di Speranza,” pilgrims of hope. Leaving Falzé, I thought about how every day on pilgrimage begins with hope. After all, why set forth in the morning if the day offered zero cause for optimism. Perhaps it’s an exciting destination ahead. Perhaps the walk promises to be lovely. Admittedly, sometimes the hope is that, once this tough walk is dealt with, everything will get a little easier. The presence of hope doesn’t deny the existence of challenge or difficulty, but rather that a) one has the capacity to surmount the challenge, and b) that the struggle will be worthwhile.
The past weeks have given me ample reason for optimism about the quality of each day’s walk. There aren’t many ugly places to be found in Italy, and the route developers behind each of these pilgrimages have done an excellent job of charting a course that maximizes quality walking. Alas, whether it’s because there isn’t as much to work with, or because the route simply needs more time to shake out, this extension of the Cammino di Sant’Antonio to Gemona del Friuli has more misses than hits. After such a marvelous day leading into Falzé, these next two stages spent a disproportionate amount of time on busy roads; I doubt the amount of unpaved walking exceeded 10% of the total kilometers.
The bull begins with a quote from Romans: “Hope does not disappoint.” It’s a strong declaration, one that flies in the face of how many conceive of hope. Certainly, every time I enthusiastically speculated about the possibility of a snow day at school, I was often confronted by sullen teenagers accusing me of “jinxing” the possibility, and on the occasions when snow didn’t materialize, they underscored the amplified disappointment that occurred as a consequence of getting their hopes up. It’s a life-as-expectation-management orientation, but I side with Romans here. Even when the snow days didn’t happen, I still emerged with three or four days of cheerful excitement, reveling in the possibility of something special and unusual happening. Hope was an orientation, not a conditional.
The city of Conegliano sits about 15km from Falzé, and my plan had been to grab a seat in a bar, charge up my phone, and burn an hour or so. On a camping day, such are the concerns–trying to position optimally for minimal time at the campsite prior to bed. Instead, I found the Prosecco capital stuffed to the gills with people. I hit another market day, with all the same cheap clothing and shoes hanging from convertible trucks, and the cafes crammed full of merry locals, enjoying the long weekend. Already saturated by the busy roads on the way in, I ended up walking straight through the city and out the other side.
“Everyone knows what it is to hope,” writes Francis. However, “uncertainty about the future may at times give rise to conflicting feelings, ranging from confident trust to apprehensiveness, from serenity to anxiety, from firm conviction to hesitation and doubt.” As a consequence, “we come across people who are discouraged, pessimistic and cynical about the future, as if nothing could possibly bring them happiness.” His goal for the Jubilee, then, was to rekindle hope in the hearts of many. And part of the joy of walking is that hope always lurks around the next corner. Climbing out of Conegliano, I suddenly found myself walking alongside an aqueduct, and then emerging alongside a fortified mansion overlooking the town. Later, as I crested a different hill, in an area that appeared empty on the gpx, I reached an empty bar, perfect for an extended break.
From there, the Cammino makes some odd moves, proceeding due north for a long stretch, brushing the far southern corner of Vittorio Veneto, and then immediately turning back to the south, giving back many of those kilometers. I can’t argue with the decision to visit Vittorio Veneto, a lovely spot nestled in an Alpine crook, but all those added kilometers for so little payoff didn’t sit as well on what was turning out to be a very hot day.
Finally, after many kilometers on busy roads, the Cammino turned back to the east, still on pavement, but with much less traffic. Francis quotes Saint Paul in Romans again: “We boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” It is through this sequence–from suffering to endurance to character to hope–Francis observes, that we also cultivate patience, a virtue inextricably linked to hope. I remember when learning Spanish in high school being struck by the fact that “esperar” means both “to hope” and “to wait for,” a coincidence that certainly speaks to the hope/patience pairing. Hope, after all, doesn’t come with a timeline, or at least it shouldn’t.
In Sarmede, my final destination for the day, the kind woman in the bar connected my phone to the wifi, while I slowly nursed a Fanta. With some dread, I checked the weather forecast. There’s a rainstorm coming that I’ve been tracking for a few days now, and if anything it has only grown more ominous. May 5th promises at least two inches of rain, potentially more, delivered in torrents, and potentially with accompanying lighting. After that day in the mountains, heavy rain inspires more trepidation than it previously did. Why, I wondered in that bar, couldn’t I just be allowed to finish my walk in peace?
Francis responds that the “interplay of hope and patience makes us see clearly that the Christian life is a journey calling for moments of greater intensity to encourage and sustain hope.” Departing Sarmede, along even more paved roads, with early morning traffic whipping past, I could see the connection even more clearly. There are ways to take the edge off a walk–to push a harder pace, to find a sneaky little short-cut, to minimize breaks–but ultimately, a 30km stage is going to take me six hours. Freaking out about it won’t make a difference, at least not a positive one. You just have to release yourself to the distance, allow the kilometers to accrue on their own terms, and find joy in the process where you can.
I found that joy in Sacile, a perfect little town at the intersection of multiple rivers, with its center situated on a tiny island in the midst of those crisscrossing streams. One woman passed by in a kayak as I took in the nearby duomo from a bridge. I didn’t even need to ask the bartender for the wifi; she saw me on my laptop and brought the password card over with a smile. Next door, I found an odds-and-ends shop where I bought an umbrella. It couldn’t hurt to have an extra layer, given what’s coming. Hope is great; planning is more likely to keep me dry.
Only in the final kilometers of the second day’s walk did I finally enter a classically great bit of walking, climbing a gentle foothill into a nature park, filled with families with small children on this sunny Saturday. Chicken coops, cows, and horses were scattered about, as strollers rolled past. A steep descent from the hilltop’s other side brought me into Polcenigo, nestled into a tight valley, lining both sides of a small river as a mansion towers high overhead. The final approach into town followed a riverside footpath, eroding ever so gradually into the water.
It occurred to me in this walk that the photos I post each day risk being deceptive, falsely representing what some of these less glamorous stages are like. After all, a representative posting from these past two days would have four photos of pavement for every nice trail. But what will I actually remember a month from now, never mind ten years ago? It’s those “moments of greater intensity” and–I would add—”greater beauty” that resonate, that make this all so meaningful and joyous. How far would I be content walking in order to have that stunning arrival in Polcenigo, or the long, leisurely afternoon here? How much struggle is worthwhile to have that one defining memory lodged in the mind?
Francis returns to the Romans well one more time, noting how Paul encouraged us to “rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer,” and if that didn’t convey it strongly enough, he later added that we need to “abound in hope.” That’s good for us as individuals, of course, but his larger point is that true, genuine, boundless hope is the most powerful testimonial of all. His focus is on Christian faith, of course, but the message transfers, I think. And maybe that’s the justification for crafting the narrative of travel around the moments of beauty, the oases of peace, even on the harder days. It’s not misrepresentation; it’s agency.
A warm afternoon lies ahead as I type this in a bar in Polcenigo, but already it’s clear that change is coming. The skies are overcast. There’s a building humidity. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to power through tomorrow’s hike in the morning, avoiding the storm’s front-end. If I’m luckier, when the heart of the storm punches through on Monday, it won’t generate any sudden flooding, or break my cheap umbrella in its first hour of use.
Near the bull’s end, Francis quotes Hebrews: “May we who have taken refuge in him be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us. We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered.” Hope as anchor seems like the most appropriate metaphor of all, given what’s ahead.
