Trips to religious sites on rise among faithful

[Croatia ppl]

"Everybody is looking for peace, a calmness," she said. "Here I can take my mind off everyday living."

Long before farmers began tending their vineyards, at an hour when chatty crickets hiding among the wild pomegranate and fig trees made the only sound, McNulty, 63, started up the slope with 50 other pilgrims.

People have been coming to this rocky slope since June 24, 1981, when six children said the Virgin Mary appeared to them here. The crowds have grown so rapidly that an estimated 1 million people will visit this year, part of a global surge in spiritual travel.

Our Lady of Medjugorje has a Delaware connection. The face of the statue of the Virgin Mary at Holy Spirit Church, near New Castle, is based on a painting depicting the vision.

According to travel agencies, religious Internet sites and analysts who study trends in spirituality, more people of just about every faith are visiting places with religious significance. Ten times more people are coming to Medjugorje now than a decade ago, and last year a record 6 million people visited the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, in Jerusalem. Saudi Arabia said 2.1 million people went to Mecca last December, 300,000 more than in 2000. An estimated 70 million Hindus went to the Ganges River in January and February for spiritual cleansing.

Todd M. Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, said 7 percent of the world's Christians -- about 150 million people -- are "on the move as pilgrims" each year.

"Perhaps the most important reason," he said, "is that people are increasingly interested in experiencing their faith through more than just reading or singing."

Growing numbers of religious travelers are also spending considerable time and money going to lesser-known spots, such as Santiago de Compostela, in north east Spain, where the apostle James is believed to be buried, and Czestochowa, in Poland, where the apostle Luke is said to have painted the revered Black Madonna icon.

The Internet has allowed millions of people to learn about places they otherwise might never have heard of, and for many, cheaper airfare has made it easier to get there. Millions of people, including McNulty and others visiting this Balkan village, travel not as tourists but as pilgrims, seeking a chance to confirm, deepen or reflect upon their faith.

"Some people come expecting a miracle, but I've just come for peace, to feel free from worry and this horrible feeling that the world is ugly," said McNulty, finding her footing on the rocky path with a walking stick in one hand and rosary beads in the other.

A belief in miracles

One recent Saturday evening, 166 people gathered at Gate 27C in the Glasgow airport to fly to Split, on Croatia's Adriatic coast, one of the hottest tourist destinations in Europe. When they arrived, McNulty and her fellow Scots walked quickly past taxis waiting to take tourists to resort hotels. Instead they boarded buses that carried them four hours into the mountains of Bosnia, past quiet villages to a bustling town transformed by religious pilgrims.

"I have been hearing about this place for years," said McNulty, who has kind brown eyes, feathery gray hair and a soft, soothing voice. A Catholic who raised six boys and now helps care for her grandchildren, McNulty is a quiet believer who doesn't make a show of her faith. She began considering a pilgrimage at the urging of her sister, who had come here three times. Then one Sunday at Mass she heard about Medjugorje again, and signed up.

McNulty knows the Vatican hasn't recognized that anything miraculous happened here, as it has with Lourdes, in France, and Fatima, in Portugal. But that didn't stop her from saving all year to pay for the $840 week-long trip. She said she believes in miracles, and she noted that the six children who said they saw the Virgin Mary are now in their 30s and 40s and have told unchanging stories of their experience for 26 years.

Rev. William Fraser, a Catholic priest who accompanied the group from Scotland, said that even if the Vatican never endorses Medjugorje, "it wouldn't affect what it has meant for me."

Fraser first came here in the early 1980s and has returned many times. He said he believes more people make religious pilgrimages now because "the physical journey to a place is similar to our own walk in life, not just to a place, but within ourselves. The physical going helps open ourselves to the pilgrimage within. It helps us find the answer to what we are searching for."

Money 'between the hills'

Skeptics suggest -- quietly -- that villagers' steadfast belief in the Virgin Mary appearances, which the faithful claim are still happening, might have something to do with the economic boom the visitors have brought. Even a local bishop has asked people to stop talking about sightings of the mother of Jesus, which, he notes, church officials have not confirmed. Vatican officials say they are studying the situation in Medjugorje.

The official jobless rate in Bosnia is over 40 percent, and in many villages nearly all those able to work leave for Germany, Austria or other countries. But in Medjugorje, which means "between the hills," local people are building new homes to accommodate more paying guests, and they are earning profits from selling such things as folding stools for those in line at confessionals or "Pray Hard" shirts with a picture of jeans with holes in the knees.

Mario Vasilj, 40, said that "everyone is touched economically" by the ever-growing number of foreigners who walk around the village with rosary beads in their hands. He works for a tour company that opened just four years ago but now brings 10,000 pilgrims a year from overseas. There are at least eight travel agencies with offices here that specialize in pilgrimage travel, now a global multibillion-dollar industry.