Page 22 - The Portal magazine - February 2025

THE P RTAL February 2025 Page 22

Highways and Byways

A European Pilgrimage

Nicholas Schofield. Leominster

Gracewing. December 2024 - ISBN 978 0 0852445716; x + 306pp. £15.99

Reviewed by Dr Simon Cotton

OT ON the heels of his recent book Highways and Byways. Discovering Catholic England, Fr Schofield
Hextends his orbit of travel to cover Europe, from Ireland in the west to Poland (and Bulgaria/Romania)
in the east; from Greece and Italy in the south to Finland (Helsinki) and Norway (Trondheim) in the north,
in 93 articles, based on pieces published in the Catholic Times.

He begins with a selection Wiseman’s mother placed
of thirteen articles, here as him on an altar in Seville
elsewhere of two to three cathedral and consecrated
pages, devoted to places in him to God. Wiseman
Rome (Italy outside Rome remembered seeing
is covered in the Southern Nelson’s ships at Cadiz,
Europe section). This after the battle of Trafalgar,
includes some delightful when he was a toddler.
entries, as with Santa Maria
in Vallicella, associated with Naturally the book
the second Apostle of Rome, visits a goodly number of
Saint Philip Neri. Marian shrines, which vary
from the wellknown, such
Then there’s Santissimo as Lourdes, Fatima (‘One
Redentore e Sant’Alfonso in October Day in 1917’),
Via Merulana (the titular Częstochowa and Knock,
church of Cardinal Nichols), to those likely to be less
where the Redemptorist Fr familiar to English readers,
Edward Douglas, the first such as the Belgian twins
of Newman’s friends to be of Banneux and Beaurain,
received into the Catholic both the scene of visions
church (in 1842) was to during the early 1930s.
spend forty years as rector. Then there is Loreto, linked
Then you read of the Stational with the Holy House of
Churches in Lent and of the Anglican shrine at
Rome in Holy Week, this Walsingham; the English
section ending appropriately poet Richard Crashaw is
with Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer residence. buried in the basilica at Loreto. Fr Schofield writes of
the Catalan shrine of the Black Virgin of Montserrat,
Many of the places that he writes about are the ones which has attracted many pilgrims, none more famous
that you would expect to encounter, such as Santiago than St Ignatius Loyola, who on coming here after
de Compostella and Mont Saint Michel, which makes suffering a war wound ‘experienced a great conversion
a striking image on the cover of the book. But Saint of heart’.
Michael also gets in at Monte Sant’Angelo in Italy, not
far from San Giovanni Rotondo, associated with Padre Then there’s Our Lady of Guadalupe, another
Pio. And Spain gets several more entries, including celebrated Marian shrine of Spain (Hernando Cortés
Seville, the birthplace of Cardinal Wiseman (whose came from the region of Guadalupe – Fr Schofield
paternal grandfather was a merchant from Waterford is good at inserting little titbits of history). Also Our
who settled there). Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza, whose basilica may
Ø