“It has long been my desire to establish an Anglican Centre in Santiago de Compostela. I envision an ecumenical place that would offer hospitality, learning, healing, hope and love to Anglican and other pilgrims at the end of their journey across Spain.” — Bishop Carlos López, Bishop of the Spanish Episcopal Church

For over 1200 years, pilgrims have been walking the Camino de Santiago, – the Way of Saint James – concluding at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. After Jerusalem and Rome, Santiago de Compostela is considered to be the third holiest pilgrimage site in Christendom.

The number of pilgrims walking has increased each year and in 2019 more than 300,000 arrived in Santiago. As the number of walkers has increased so also have the number of non-Roman-Catholic pilgrims risen.  Although Rome, Jerusalem and Canterbury each have an Anglican Centre to welcome and minister to pilgrims, Santiago does not.

To meet this growing need, the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Anglican Pilgrim Centre of Santiago unanimously voted to initiate a capital campaign in order to purchase, renovate and open the Anglican Centre in Santiago de Compostela.  The $10 million project will establish the Centre as an “ecumenical place that offers hospitality, learning, healing, hope and love.”

In the words of Nancy Hoxsie Mead, board president of the Friends of the Anglican Centre in Santiago de Compostela and Lay Canon of Madrid’s Cathedral of the Redeemer:

“In 2019, 347,875 people walked the Camino de Santiago. Although church attendance may be declining worldwide, more and more people are finding God along this ancient pilgrimage path in Spain. We need to open an Anglican Centre in Santiago to meet these pilgrims at the end of their journey. We need to be there to share with them the faith which we love, to listen to the stories of their transformative walk, and then to send them home, renewed and refreshed, knowing that their pilgrimage has not ended but in fact has just begun.”