CNA Staff, Feb 18, 2025 / 14:45 pm

Organizers on Tuesday announced the full route for the next iteration of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, which will see Christ in the Eucharist carried some 3,300 miles from Indianapolis to Los Angeles beginning in May.

“We are thrilled to be gearing up for the 2025 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. We trust that God has profound blessings and graces in store for us as we journey with Jesus through cities and towns nationwide again this summer,” said Jason Shanks, president of the National Eucharistic Congress Inc., in a Feb. 18 statement.

This year’s pilgrimage is a continuation of last year’s unprecedented four simultaneous Eucharistic pilgrimages, which started at the edges of the country and eventually converged in Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congress in July 2024.

Over a quarter of a million people across the country encountered the pilgrimages last summer, organizers said.

The 2025 route is named for St. Katharine Drexel (1858–1955), a Pennsylvanian saint who abandoned her family’s considerable fortune in order to found an order of religious sisters dedicated to serving impoverished African American and Native American populations of the United States.

By the time of her death, she had founded over 50 missions and 60 schools. St. John Paul II canonized her in 2000.

The “Drexel Route” will open with a Mass of Thanksgiving in Indianapolis on Sunday, May 18. The route then heads northwest through Illinois to Iowa before turning to the southwest and descending through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. From Texas the route continues roughly west through New Mexico, Arizona, and finally California.

Twenty Catholic dioceses and four eparchies will host pilgrimage events on the way to the conclusion in Los Angeles on the feast of Corpus Christi, June 22. As with last year, a small group of young adult “Perpetual Pilgrims” will accompany the Eucharist the entire way, while anyone wishing to join for small portions of the route will be able to sign up to do so.

The pilgrimage route will include numerous opportunities to encounter the Eucharistic Jesus, including daily Mass, Eucharistic adoration, Eucharistic processions, witness talks, and fellowship meals with the Perpetual Pilgrims, organizers said.

Like last year’s events, this year’s pilgrimage will focus on Eucharistic encounters with marginalized communities, bringing the Eucharist to assisted living facilities, food banks, a juvenile detention center, a hospital, and a federal prison along the route.

In addition, there will be a number of stops with particular significance to Catholics along the way; the tomb of Venerable Fulton Sheen in Illinois; the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother in Oklahoma City; several mission churches in Southern California; and St. Michael Church near Window Rock, which is the capital of the Navajo Nation in the southwestern desert.

In honor of the ongoing Jubilee Year of Hope, there will be an additional focus on Eucharistic healing, organizers said.

Events are planned in Wichita, Kansas, to honor the victims of the recent plane crash in Washington, D.C., and their families; a special Benediction and prayers for all migrants and refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border; and in Los Angeles, the organizers “hope to bring our Eucharistic Lord to the communities impacted by the wildfires.”

There will be some special and unusual stops as well. Perhaps most notably, a Eucharistic procession beginning at the baseball field from the movie “Field of Dreams” will take place as part of the events in Iowa. The famous field is just down the road from the historic Basilica of St. Francis Xavier in Dyersville, Iowa, and the film featured the late Catholic actor James Earl Jones in a prominent role.

Registration and a full listing of events in each participating diocese will be posted “later this spring,” organizers said.

The announcement of the 2025 pilgrimage follows the news earlier this month that the next National Eucharistic Congress — the 11th — will be held in 2029.

Last July’s National Eucharistic Congress, the first such event to take place on American soil since World War II, attracted tens of thousands of people for several massive sessions of Eucharistic adoration in Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, numerous talks and workshops related to the Catholic faith, and a 60,000-participant Eucharistic procession through downtown Indianapolis.