Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

About a year ago on a sunny day I climbed into Galicia on the Camino and stayed on O’Cebreiro. I woke to a fog which turned into a driving rain.
The Camino follows farm roads which are also used by the local animals, with predictable results. I arrived in Triacastela in the rain and changed [...]

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Martin Sheen’s and Emilio Estevez’s The Way opened in 15 cities, and will open on 500 screens on October 21. On Saturday I went to Washington to see it; I highly recommend it, but be prepared for an emotional roller coaster.

It is never too late to find the way.
I made the 500 mile trek of [...]

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There is a well-known story about Ignatius of Loyola.
 
He was a soldier and, like Don Quixote, his favorite reading was books of chivalry. After he was wounded and recuperating all that he had to read was lives of the saints, and this reading led to his conversion.
 
After his conversion he was travelling to Montserrat on [...]

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I have been reading Death Comes to the Archbishop. It is balm for the soul after the other stuff I have been reading: the endless tales of clerical crimes, and the horrors visited by the anticlerical Republicans upon the often innocent priests of Spain. Willa Cather traduces Father Martinez, and is somewhat condescending to the [...]

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 The day when the Lord calls him, he will be neither disturbed nor surprised. He will have known this departure, he will have loved it – this manner of going and leaving all things, ready to take them up again or never again to find them, as God wills.  Renunciation will be familiar to him, [...]

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People die on the Camino de Santiago from age, illness, and accidents. The hazard I had to face was Spanish drivers. Late in the day, as the pilgrim enters a town he often forgets that city streets have cars in them, and steps off without looking, and…. But nothing happened. Nonetheless, it was a sobering [...]

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When tourists arrive in Santiago, they are somewhat surprised (and occasionally horrified) to discover that the city of full of the dulcet tones of the bagpipe (gaita). At the Santiago Parador, we heard one American ask why a bagpipe was being played in the square, and had to be informed it was the National Instrument. [...]

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Several people, both on this blog, and elsewhere, have asked me how I can remain a Catholic after what I’ve discovered about the Church.  That question deserves a long and thoughtful answer, but it would be much along the lines on what Martin Sheen says in this interview about his life and his new film [...]

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 I tried to go to mass every evening on the Camino. Most churches have evening masses for the pilgrims. Oddly enough, Sunday was the hard day – the sole village mass was in the morning and there was no mass in the evening. But 9 days out of 10 I was able to go to [...]

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I am in Mansilla de las Mulas only 240 miles to go
I am in very very very small Spanish villages.
I will post more when I get back in November

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Tomorrow, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a friend of ours, Father Al Rose, is saying mass at the Cathedral in Baltimore and giving me the blessing for a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.
C: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
R: Who made heaven and earth.
C: The [...]

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Martin Sheen (who is in fact Spanish - or rather Galician) has done a very moving movie on the Camino de Santiago - “The Way.” It will be released July 25 (the Feast of St James) in a Holy Year for the Camino, because this year the Feast of St. James falls on a Sunday.

I, Deo volente – Dios mediante, will begin [...]

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