As I write this, I am following along – on Facebook – the brand-new Archbishop of Canterbury. Sarah Mullally, the 106th in this role and the first woman.
As Archbishop of Canterbury, she is the leader of the Anglican Church of England and spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican community, a first among equals. This is a diplomatic way of saying she isn’t really the boss of all those Anglican Bishops, say in Africa, well maybe sort of…not really! She also gets to sit in the British House of Lords, where she will bring ‘ethical reflection.’ Oh dear, dare I say, ‘good luck with that!’ Those Lords can get quite cantankerous.
She is installed or enthroned in Canterbury on March 25. That there is now a woman Archbishop of Canterbury will please many but it will also ruffle feathers. What I am delighted about, is that she’s starting off with a pilgrimage.
She is walking from St Paul’s Cathedral in London to Canterbury Cathedral, a 140 kilometer walk to prepare and arrive for her installation. Along the way, she visits various significant places, including, and also fun for the Camino world: Southwark, where Chaucer’s fictional Canterbury Tales pilgrims started on their journey to Canterbury to the Shrine of Thomas Becket, the 12th century martyr and saint. You may remember, dear reader, how interested I am in the Wife of Bath, and her world of the Middle Ages and the activities of women in particular at that time.
I was also interested to see that this walk of the archbishop is being promoted as somewhat of a revival of pilgrimage in England. Between the Reformation, when Henry 8th destroyed many shrines and suppressed pilgrimage, and then the Civil Wars, where all things considered Catholic, were banned, pilgrimage was not happening in England. Though there was in reaction to Henry 8th and his religious actions, an uprising to maintain the church traditions that was called The Pilgrimage of Grace. Needless to say, it was brutally repressed, which probably sullied the word pilgrimage even more.
Many of us have met people or heard about people from Britain who have, over the past decades, been trotting around the UK on pilgrimage. However, this very publicized pilgrimage by the archbishop must be giving pilgrimage a great moment in the sun in England. And they are pushing all the right online buttons: frequent posts, she seems to be everywhere, meeting locals, kids, people in wheelchairs, sound bites. She was even invited to tea for a fancy cake by one of the Great Bake-off contestants.
And for the rest of us, we can connect with Canterbury as one of the starting points for the Via Francigena, a mere 1,700-kilometer route, to Rome.