Uit de voeten?

Bedevaartplaatsen in Nederland (Pilgrimage places in the Netherlands) is a research project that comprehensively inventories and describes pilgrimage sites in the Netherlands. The team responsible for the project has had to contend with the fact that when Catholicism was banned from public practice in the Republic, Dutch Catholics were forced to go on cross-border pilgrimages to Belgium and Germany. The Catholic revival in the nineteenth century gave rise to a sharp increase in the number of pilgrims going abroad. From its inception, the Belgian Marian shrine of Scherpenheuvel has been hugely popular with people in North Brabant and Limburg. Through the years, however, a number of external events has temporarily obstructed the crossings – the most recent being the COVID 19 pandemic, beginning in 2020. Interviews with six organized groups reveal how traditional patterns fared in the aftermath of the Coronavirus shutdown. And they report on how new procedures for the journey were created. Both the old patterns and the new models illuminate possible responses to inevitable disruptions in the long-term flow of pilgrims to Scherpenheuvel.