Green Pilgrimage Network

 Green Pilgrimage  dead buried ?

 Fake news! Alleluia! 




Founded in 2011, the GPN has a vision -

"pilgrims on all continents, and the pilgrim cities that receive them, becoming models of care for the environment and leaving a positive footprint on the earth."

A need that has become ever more pressing as the Global Warming and Species Extinction have become more apparent.

So what's behind the story?  It would be easy to blame the E.U.!  But the truth is the E.U. have been a force for good since they picked up the idea iand developed Green Pilgrimage Interreg Europe and the European Green Pilgrimage Network.

The U.K. leaves the E.U. at the end of January 2021.  So, U.K. beneficiaries can wave goodbye to E.U. grants.  The friendships  forged through the European Green Pilgrimage Network will endure and we will continue to value our rediscoverd common history. Pilgrims from the U.K. will continue to walk the Camino de Santigo, visit Vadstena, Trondheim, Assisi and Rome; and Europeans will visit Canterbury, St. Alban's and walk the Walsingham Way.

You may regret Brexit but there are benefits to an end to Interreg grants in the U.K.. In my experience, government reciprants of E.U. grants have shown little interest in pilgrimage and green issues, putting up with tiresome religious types and tree huggers for the sake of money.

The vision remains, with or without government support.  There are good  reasons for encouraging pilgrims to live in harmony with the created order, get out of their cars and coaches, tread ancient paths and slow down so they can catch up with a three mile an hour God.

And there are strong reasons for government to support Green Pilgrimage. The  economic arguements that prompted the Interreg Europe intiative to build on the tourism success of the Way of St. James -  as set out in the U.K. context by the  National Ecosystems Assessment - Chapter 16 - should encourage future U.K. Governments to follow suit. 

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