K4) Family Pilgrimage to Rome for the Jubilee Year

This paper brings together two connected, yet seemingly unrelated strands of research. The first portion of the paper considers the Catholic Jubilee Year, 2025, its significance and related pilgrimage activities that are facilitated in Rome at this important time. The paper briefly outlines the theological and biblical significance of this special year of reconciliation and forgiveness which occurs every 25 years and draws millions of international pilgrims to Rome. While seemingly entirely different, the second theme to be explored in the paper is the concept of Family Pilgrimage. According to Jenkins and Roszack (2023), the vast majority of pilgrim literature focuses on the individual, their motivations, behaviours and experiences. However, large numbers of pilgrims travel in groups, couples and family units. The compromised decision making and group behaviour of families is a negotiated activity which can produce a very different range of interpersonal interactions, and thus, impacts on the overall experience (Chen et al., 2022) of travel, tourism and pilgrimage. In this paper, the author uses an auto-ethnographic approach to explore a family trip to Rome during the Jubilee Year. Through the medium of family photographs, reflection, and insights from a family pilgrimage, the author draws some insightful conclusions about the meaning and value of Pilgrimage in terms of family bonding, religious insight and pilgrimage experience. As a postscript - the fieldwork for this paper was undertaken at a very strange time for Catholics visiting Rome, when the Pope, the global leader of their Church was sick and dying in hospital. The entire city held it’s breath, in sombre anticipation of his imminent recovery or death. While this feeling of anticipation was not intended to form part of the research, it cast a shadow over the entirety of the fieldwork.