Jubilee 2025: The third stop of the ‘In Cammino’ pilgrimage will be at the Abbey of St. Gallen in Switzerland on 29 November

The ‘cultural’ pilgrimage to the great abbeys of Europe promoted by Livia Pomodoro of the Milan-based association Spazio Teatro No'hma continues. The third stage of the ‘In Cammino’ journey will take place on Wednesday 29 November, when it will reach the Abbey area of St. Gallen, in Switzerland. ‘In Cammino’ is one of the initiatives happening in preparation for the 2025 Jubilee: it is essentially a pilgrimage taking place over 3 years, from 2023 to 2025, which will travel across Europe, covering 7 countries (England, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland , Italy) and 14 of the largest and most prestigious Abbeys on the continent.

The itinerary will be an opportunity for participants to experience a moment of coming together and discovery in these timeless places, which are symbols of European history and spirituality, before they arrive in Rome in 2025 for the Holy Year.

The library of the Abbey of San Gallo is a real jewel of the baroque period which, to this today, contains within it a priceless collection of manuscripts, prints and historical documents, and it is here that the journey of ‘In Cammino’ will arrive.

During the day, the association's delegation will meet, within the Abbey precincts and at the Cathedral, the ecclesiastical and civil authorities of St. Gallen, including the mayor and the director of the Abbey Library.

To mark the occasion, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture, has recorded a video message, in the form of a lectio magistralis on the word ‘Silence’, which will be the common thread of the meeting. “It may seem paradoxical that in order to be able to talk about silence one must resort to the word which is, by definition, the opposite of silence. In truth the two realities are intertwined with each other. The true antithesis is between silence and chaos, noise, chatter, not between silence and words," the cardinal explained in his lecture.

Livia Pomodoro, who organized the initiative said: “Since 1983 the Abbey complex of San Gallo has been a World Heritage Site, together with its magnificent Library - an island of knowledge still active today, which has its roots in European history and culture.”