Pilgrimage to Chartres


The Chartres pilgrimage, also known in French as the pèlerinage de Chrétienté, is an annual pilgrimage from Notre-Dame de Paris to Notre-Dame de Chartres occurring around the Christian feast of Pentecost, organized by Notre-Dame de Chrétienté, a Catholic lay non-profit organization based in Versailles, France. Although the pilgrimage has existed since 1983, the organisation was not founded until 2000.
The pilgrimage characteristically makes use of the pre-Vatican II form of the Roman Rite of Mass.
In 2007, the 25th anniversary of the pilgrimage, amid rumours of a forthcoming papal document favouring use of the 1962 Roman Missal – the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum was in fact published on 7 July of that year – there were nearly ten thousand pilgrims in Chartres on Pentecost Monday May 28 despite difficult weather conditions.

History

Chartres was a place of pilgrimage even before its Gothic cathedral was built and, by the end of the 12th century, became one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in Europe. It was at a pilgrimage instead to the tomb of Fr. Emmanuel in Mesnil-Saint-Loup that the traditionalist Catholic organization Centre Henri et André Charlier decided to initiate a traditionalist pilgrimage from the cathedral of Paris to that of Chartres. The pilgrimage gradually grew in popularity.

Split

In 1988, traditionalist archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four priests as bishops against the express order of Pope John Paul II, an act of schism that split the traditionalist community.
The pilgrimage of Notre-Dame de Chrétienté from Paris to Chartres, now with over ten thousand participants each year, has kept the name Pèlerinage de Chrétienté ; but another pilgrimage, associated with the Society of Saint Pius X, goes from Chartres to Paris and is called Pèlerinage de Tradition.

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