Jubilee Door Pilgrimage: Pilgrims of Hope & Hopia
Among my closest friends, a “tribe” I see and listen to every day (virtually, that is) are the members of my Assumption Convent rosary group, composed of former classmates and members of our batch.
We pray the rosary and Divine Mercy every day, rain or shine, except perhaps for Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. We pray for the intentions of our classmates and loved ones, for Pope Francis, and yes, for world peace.
Personally, I find praying the rosary calming, reassuring, and addicting with its invigorating power. A classmate says it has changed her life.
I myself can attest to how powerful the group’s (consisting anywhere from nine to 19 classmates in every rosary session) prayers are — as have so many others even outside the group that we have prayed for. Perhaps the miracle here is also the bond between friends, linked to the other as the beads in a rosary are, getting tighter every day. In praying together, we heal ourselves and each other, and become instruments of hope.
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Our rosary group prays a lot, but it also “plays” as well. A recent New Year’s party saw the girls participating in parlor games like fourth graders would, shrieking with every “bring me” item in their bags. We eat, pray and play. We eat, pray, love and laugh.
Recently, two of the group’s originals Aissa Barerra Cojuangco and Chary Ozaeta Gohh organized a pilgrimage to seven churches designated by the Catholic Church as pilgrim churches for the Jubilee Year of Hope. Each pilgrim church has a “Holy Door” or Porta Sancta.
“In Catholic tradition, the Holy Door represents the passage to salvation — the path to a new and eternal life, which was opened to humanity by Jesus,” explained Pope Francis in Spes Non Confundit?(Hope Does Not Disappoint), the papal bull officially proclaiming the Holy Year of 2025.
According to Catholic online sources, the first Holy Door was opened by Pope Francis at St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve 2024 to usher in the beginning of the Jubilee Year worldwide. The Holy Doors are located at the Basilica of St. Peter, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, the Basilica of St. Mary Major, and the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. A fifth door will also be located at a prison.
Since many cannot travel to Rome for a pilgrimage, bishops worldwide designated their cathedrals and shrines as special places of prayer for pilgrims. In the Philippines hundreds of churches around the country have been designated as Jubilee Churches, each with a Holy Door for pilgrims to enter.
“I am Interested in the Jubilee years of the Catholic Church as I treat it as a spiritual retreat — special reconciliation, and pilgrimage and spiritual renewal,” Aissa said when I asked her what inspired her to organize the Holy Door pilgrimage for our rosary group. “Like when I started the Holy Rosary prayers during the pandemic in 2020 with the batch, I thought of treating this pilgrimage as a way of bringing the pilgrims closer to our Lord during this Holy Year of Hope. We have a wonderful group of prayer warriors who all share the same dedication to our faith and I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to bond while fulfilling our devotion.”
This year, Aissa chose to visit the churches around the Manila area and chose seven churches that are in and around Intramuros, Quiapo and San Miguel.
Twenty-two rosary group members signed up for this day pilgrimage and left at 8 a.m. sharp from the meeting place in Makati. Our first stop was the National Shrine of St. Jude Thaddeus in San Miguel, near Malacañang. We made it a point to enter the designated Holy Door there, as in all Holy Doors in the next churches. Unfortunately, we found the door at the Mania Cathedral shut.
We passed by the many stately restored manors in Arlegui and San Rafael on our way to our next church, the National Shrine of St. Michael and the Archangels, also in San Miguel and flanking Malacañang on the other side. We then motored to the Minor Basilica and Metropolitan Cathedral Immaculate or the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros.
Our batch mate Anna Fernandez organized a lunch for us at the Bay Leaf in Intramuros that was as sumptuous as its view — the city of Manila, including City Hall and Luneta. We took photos on the rooftop of the hotel, as well as inside its elevators!
From there, we were off to the Minor Basilica and National Shrine of St. Lorenzo Ruiz in Binondo, where the first Filipino saint once served as altar boy. The altar in this church is quite unique because it incorporates faith and the heritage of our Filipino-Chinese kababayans.
After the praying at the Binondo Church, the Assumption pilgrims of hope suddenly transformed into pilgrims of…Hopia! “Expeditions,” one led by Risa Baltazar Nepomuceno fanned out in search of Holland Bakery, to many, the Holy Grail of all hopia. After finding its original store deserted, we reached the promised Hol-LAND down the road. What a ruckus we made in the store, like children in a candy store. Others went to Eng Bee Tin as well. With bags heavy with rosaries, hopia, broccoli and muscat grapes from the Carvajal alley, we returned to our coaster to pray once more. Each pilgrim had a buddy so no one got left behind either in church or in a hopia bakery.
Our next stop was the Minor Basilica and National Shrine of Jesus Nazareno in Quiapo, which any time of the day is filled to the last pew. We joined them in prayer before ogling at the stands outside the church where the vendors sold rosaries, herbs, flowers and some unmentionables to a good Catholic girl.
We passed through the postcard-pretty Ilalim ng Tulay on our way to the jaw-dropping Gothic Minor Basilica of San Sebastian, the only church made of steel in the Philippines.
Our last stop was the modern Don Bosco Church in Makati, with its edifying stone altar.
It was a spiritually enriching day. Life is a pilgrimage. Most times it is a walk in the park, but sometimes it can be a walk to Calvary. But whether all you have is hope or hopia, or an abundance of both, the journey is always better with friends who eat, pray and play with you, with love and laughter.
(The full list of the Jubilee 2025 Pilgrim Churches in the Philippines is available online.)
You may e-mail me at [email protected]. Follow me on Instagram @joanneraeramirez
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