Guest Pilgrimage: Fr. Ryan Humphries’ Sabbatical 2018: The Camino and Other Sites in Europe

FATHER'S TALK:

From 2007 to 2010, recently-ordained Fr. Ryan Humphries was the Parochial Vicar (assistant pastor) for my parish, the then Church of the Immaculate Conception in Natchitoches, Louisiana. In 2013 he returned for what became a three-year stint as Rector of what by then was the Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. I consider him my main spiritual adviser and a good friend.

June 2016

As Father explains at the beginning of this talk, in early 2018 he approached our recently installed Bishop for a two-week extension to his four weeks of vacation to allow him to make a pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago and unexpectedly came away from that meeting with a four-month sabbatical (August-November) and quite expanded agenda of pilgrimages all over Europe. That was just the first of a series of unexpected developments from which he took a profound spiritual message.

On Sunday 24 February 2019, I received a text message from him letting me know that he would be in Natchitoches on Tuesday evening 26 February, giving a talk on his pilgrimage with pictures and lots of anecdotes, and asking me to “get the word out.” By the end of the exchange that ensued, I had created a title, a banner, and a Facebook Event for the talk – and had arranged to meet Fr. Ryan for beer at the local pub beforehand.

The Facebook Event got some traction, being shared well outside my own circle, including to someone lamenting that she could not drive up to Natchitoches from New Orleans for the talk and hoping that someone would record it. So I asked Father if it would be okay to do so,  suggesting that he just refer anyone wanting it to contact me but that I would not post it or anything. He responded to go ahead and post it, and offered his slideshow as well. And so was born the first-ever “guest post” to this little travel blog.

I am definitely an amateur at wedding audio to video, and although I am overall satisfied with the result I nonetheless apologize for what is objectively a rather crude job of editing. I thought I had the timings down, but when it compiled some parts had drifted a few seconds out of sync. (My apologies as well for my phone alarm going off near the end of Fr. Ryan’s talk! I was using the phone to capture the audio, so that comes through loud and clear. I didn’t expect the talk to go over an hour in length and forgot about that particular alarm setting.)

Kevin Shanahan of the Natchitoches Parish Journal attended the latter part of the talk, took pictures, and posted an article about Fr. Ryan’s adventures a couple of days later, which may be read here [LINK].

Here are a few more links to a few (by no means all) interesting items:

Santiago de Compostela [LINK]

• Legend of St. James [LINK]
• Camino [LINK]
• Botafumeiro [LINK]

National Art Museum of Catalonia [LINK]

The Viganò Testimony [LINK]

The Louisiana Window in Westminster Abbey: [LINK] [LINK]