Despite my deep and abiding faith, something in me prickled when I tried to convince myself that this could be the real deal. I couldn’t bring myself to go, that is until my most recent — and fifth — visit to the Eternal City. The Holy Stairs were on the itinerary of the pilgrimage I was leading through Italy. When we arrived at the site, I fully intended to stand by and let the other pilgrims proceed, and then my husband, Dennis, volunteered to go first when no one else stepped forward. I immediately joined him, as did our son, Noah.

It is customary to climb the 28 steps on your knees while praying, which is what we did. As the three of us began, all on the same step as we inched our way up, I prayed for all those intentions I had brought with me from people back home and for my family and friends. As we continued, sometimes waiting for those ahead who were having more difficulty navigating the ascent, I began expanding my prayers to include all those who were before and behind me on the stairs, and finally, as my knees started to ache and I felt a twinge in my back, my prayers seemed to encompass the whole world, and there was a feeling of incredible love for all those on the stairs with me. It was for me a version of what Trappist monk Tho­mas Merton described in his “Fourth and Walnut moment,” when he stood on a street corner in Kentucky and saw those around him shining like the sun.

I was deeply moved, not because I suddenly believed without a doubt in the veracity of the claim that the stairs are the stairs, but because none of that mattered anymore. What mattered was that we climbed those stairs out of faith, bound together by a common purpose with our interior prayers swirling around the silence.

That night, as our pilgrimage group gathered for dinner, we began talking about our favorite parts of the day, which, as you might expect on a pilgrimage through Italy, was jam-packed with important spiritual sites. I was so happy to hear numerous people say that the Holy Stairs were the highlight. And that is the blessing and beauty of pilgrimage.

We often think we understand the meaning of the word “pilgrimage,” until we find ourselves in the midst of an actual pilgrim journey with things not going exactly as planned, or on a staircase we had no intention of climbing and discover transcendence and transformation where we least expect it. That is often the case when we are willing to embrace the journey before us rather than the image we’ve created in our minds. To be a pilgrim is not to sit in a café and sip espresso, although that’s lovely; it is to walk the path of those who came before us in hopes that as we do so we will be changed.

Author Mark Nepo writes: “To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.”

We do not have to travel far to take up the pilgrim journey. Our very lives can become a pilgrimage, if we can, as St. Catherine of Siena said, recognize that “all the way to heaven is heaven.” God is in our every breath, our every step. All that’s required is our attention and intention.

Mary DeTurris Poust is leading two September retreats in the region: Stillpoint at Pyramid Life Center on Sept. 5-7, and The Journey Is the Goal at Graymoor Retreat Center on Sept. 19-21. For more information, click HERE.

This column originally appeared in the July 24, 2025 issue of The Evangelist.

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We will visit the most spectacular and sacred sites these Italian cities have to offer while leaving plenty of time for sipping a cappuccino in a piazza, shopping in an open-air market, or just wandering down a narrow cobblestone street toward a hidden-but-magnificent gem you didn’t even know you needed to see. Throughout we’ll have our own chaplain with us every step of the way. Father Matthew Duclos of the Albany Diocese will say daily Mass for our group and offer insights gained from his years of study in Rome. That’s a benefit that can’t be calculated!

We’ll stay four nights in Rome, giving us plenty of time to get our fill of the Eternal City and all its glories, including a papal audience with Pope Francis. From there we’ll take our comfortable motor coach to the small-but-spectacular city of Orvieto en route to Assisi, where we will spend two nights soaking up the mystical, magical energy that seeps up from the streets of this city of St. Francis. We head to Siena next, another not-to-be-missed medieval city, on our way to fabulous Florence, where we will spend another two days and nights. We head north to the quaint and walkable city of Padua, which will be our base for Venice and our last two days of the pilgrimage. We’ll depart from Venice on another non-stop flight back to Newark on Friday, Oct. 11, 2024.

I have traveled to Italy four times — as a pilgrimage leader, a pilgrim, a student, and with my family — and I can tell you that this particular pilgrimage offers a wonderful and much-needed balance, giving us plenty of time in key cities to see all that needs to be seen while also providing ample time to experience Italian life and not simply check off a list of tourist attractions. You don’t want to race through Italy; you want to experience, at least now and then, dolce far niente — the sweetness of doing nothing, for which Italians are so famous. Join me, and find out for yourself why I continue to return to Italy again and again. You will discover that you cannot get enough.

You can find many more details in the full itinerary and brochure HERE. For New York Capital Region folks, Father Matt and I will be hosting an informational gathering on Sunday, Jan,. 14, at 10 a.m. at St. Matthew’s Church in Voorheesville, following the 9 a.m. Mass. Join us for a slide show, Q&A, and some Italian cookies!

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Join me for a fabulous 2024 pilgrimage to Italy that will begin in Rome and take you to Orvieto, Assisi, Siena, Florence, Padua, and Venice. The trip of a lifetime in a country that is nothing short of spectacular. From the awe of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Colosseum to the quaintness of ancient narrow streets and open-air markets, you will get to experience the very best of what Italy has to offer. We will leave New York on Monday, September 30, and return Friday, October 11, The tour will be organized and operated by Select International Tours & Cruises. I will serve as your tour leader, and Father Matt Duclos of the Albany Diocese will serve as our priest chaplain. Cost: $3,995 land only. Airfare options will be offered as soon as group pricing is available. If you want to sign up right away to reserve your spot, you’ll be given an option to get the airfare pricing as well as soon as it becomes available.

For fun updates related to Italy and the cities we’ll be visiting, follow my travel page on Facebook: Italy: A Feast for Body & Soul
You can find my page on the Select International website HERE. Or click on the PDF of the brochure below for details.

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Our pilgrimage group was lucky enough to spend two days in Assisi — inside the city walls and out in the surrounding area. Although we didn’t originally intend to go back to the center of Assisi the second day, a large group of us just couldn’t stay away. We had to go back for one more dose of what can only be described as heaven on earth. You can feel the sacredness of the place seeping up through the ancient stone streets. You can sense St. Francis all around you. You can spend hours just walking and sitting and watching the world go by and be perfectly content, which is what we did on our visit the second day.

In today’s little photo essay below, I’ll give you shots from inside the city on both days, with one exception. Although it’s outside the city walls, I’ve included our visit to Santa Maria degli Angeli because the Porziuncula should be included with the rest of the holy sites of Assisi and not with the winery tour. So here you’ll see the beautiful city of Assisi: spiritually powerful, physically breathtaking. I can’t wait to go back.

First stop, the San Damiano cross. This is the cross that spoke to Francis, that all-important moment when Jesus told him to “repair my church, which you see is falling into ruin.” Francis, as we know, thought Jesus meant the actual physical church building, but later Francis figured out that he meant the Church as in universal Church. He founded the Franciscan Order, and the work began and continues to this day. So this cross is pretty special. It hangs in the Basilica of Santa Chiara. (And thank you, Dennis, for snapping this photo despite signs that said it was forbidden.)

As we made our way through the city we passed lots of little stalls selling cheese and cured meats. Oh, if only I could have taken samples home…

And lots of roadside shrines. Just gorgeous. This one was my favorite.

And beautiful doors, like this one.

On the street where St. Francis was born, there’s a beautiful church built on the spot, and at the end of the street a little door leading to a shrine that is supposed to be on the exact spot where Francis was born. Here’s the alley…

Here’s the shrine…

Believe it or not, this alley and that shrine are on a regular street where we found an amazing little restaurant, Otello’s. We had a fantastic meal, and our guide later told us — when she asked where we had eaten — that we had found a local gem. We can vouch for that. Here’s my meal of farro e fagioli. Dennis’ pizza is in the background. And local wine, always wine.

Here’s us looking really happy about being at this restaurant in this city. Assisi selfie.

Finally we made our way to the Basilica of St. Francis, the moment I had been waiting for. Okay, one of the moments, but a pretty big one.

Right where we were standing for the photo above was a home with its shutters open. Dennis managed to catch a boy watching us from the half-open shutter.

How about this beautiful alley with a view. There’s actually a restaurant at the end of this with a few seats looking out over Umbria.

Our first day in Assisi also included a visit outside the city walls to St. Mary of the Angels, which is the basilica that is built over the Porziuncula. So it is a church within a church. Here’s the basilica from the outside:

And here’s the inside. The little church is the one where Francis heard Christ talking to him from the cross. (Thank you again, Dennis, for taking a forbidden photo.)

On our second day in the city, we had a chance to relax in the main piazza and just watch the world go by. Make sure you have time to do this when you visit. Here was the view from our table.

Here we are enjoying Birra Chiara, a beer named after our daughter. Okay, named after St. Clare.

Finally it was time to leave. It wasn’t easy to leave. It’s not even easy to leave this post about Assisi, as you can probably tell by the overload of photos.

Here’s one last look back at the city as we depart at dusk.

If you’d like to experience Assisi, join me on my next pilgrimage, Sept. 30-Oct. 11, 2024. Email me for info, or watch this website. Or follow my travel page on Facebook: Italy, A Feast for Body and Soul

If you missed my earlier posts, click on Florence, Siena, and/or Coffee, wine and beer, oh my.

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This is, of course, just a sampling of what we had. Multiply what you see here by 13, the number of days were were traveling. Even on the plane (Alitalia), wine is free and free-flowing. It’s a beautiful thing. So many beverages, so little time.

Vino rosso in Florence with my sweetie.

Siena wine, straight from the source.

Such a pretty cappuccino…in Assisi.

Cappuccino in Assisi, take two. This time with an accidental heart in the foam.

Switching things up. Birra Chiara in Assisi. We HAD to order it; it’s named after our child, for goodness sake.

The look of pure pouring concentration.

It was a warm fall day in Assisi. Beer with a view.

Okay, this one didn’t even make the blog headline. After days and days of wine, we decided to go a totally different route on our last night in Rome at La Botticella, a little Canadian-owned bar in an alley off Piazza Navona. Amaretto and Jack Daniels on the rocks. And, no, that is not our ashtray. Just comes with the territory in Italy.

Truck stop espresso on our way to Pompeii. Real glass cups. So civilized.

Espresso in Naples, as we wait for the boat to Capri. With a side of sfogliatelle. Yum.

White wine in Massa Lubrense to go with our delicious antipasto and seafood main course and glorious view. Perfect.

Assisi posts will go up on Monday and Tuesday, so be sure to come back.

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It’s interesting how, even when we’re far from our loved ones and friends, we often find ways to create family right where we are, without blood connections, without a shared history. Whether we’re students living in a college dormitory, workers temporarily assigned to a far-off location, or pilgrims traveling in a strange land, we tend to seek out community, a place where we feel accepted and protected, or at least a little less alone.

When I led a 13-day pilgrimage to Italy recently, our group of 37 pilgrims, one full-time English-speaking Italian tour guide and one Italian-speaking fearless bus driver became a family of sorts. Although we started as strangers – with only a few personal connections among the group – as the days and weeks progressed, you could see signs of family emerging.

As group leader, I was in a parent role of sorts, separated a bit from the rest of the group but at a perfect distance to watch relationships as they developed. I remember the quiet joy I felt one night, about halfway through our pilgrimage, when we sat in a restaurant in a remote part of Rome. We almost didn’t make it to dinner that night since our driver could barely fit our bus through the narrow roads, and then a brief rainstorm scrapped plans to eat dinner outside under a vine-covered portico. I worried about the group’s mood, but a few minutes later, I watched these former strangers gathered around their tables (photo at top), heads bent together, glasses raised in a toast, laughter echoing throughout the rustic Italian dining room. We had become a family.

Of course, family isn’t all sunshine and happiness. There were moments of frustration, like when yours truly was exasperated over another inopportune bathroom break. (I told you I was like a parent. And a sometimes-impatient parent at that!) There were moments of worry, like when a man in our group fell on the cobblestone street just beyond St. Peter’s Basilica and when a few others had to remain back at the hotel because of leg problems or sheer exhaustion. But as with our families back at home, joy and love overcame everything else. By the end of our journey, we knew these new friends would watch out for us, care for us, and make sure no one was left behind or lost.

And that’s really at the heart of the pilgrim journey: community, family. Yes, we go on these journeys – whether overseas or closer to home – to grow in faith, but we also go to meet others who share that faith, people who will walk with us, both literally and figuratively, as we travel our spiritual path.

As we prayed together in Siena, Assisi, Rome, and Salerno, our faith forged a bond, one that will tie us to each other forever because of the powerful experiences we shared — being only a few feet from Pope Francis when he rode by in the popemobile at the papal audience, attending Mass celebrated by Cardinal Dolan at St. Peter’s Basilica early one morning, kneeling before the tomb of St. Clare in Assisi, standing in the tiny cave where St. Francis once prayed.

As we broke bread on our last afternoon in Massa Lubrense, the town where my grandfather was born more than 100 years ago, the sun beat down with a summer-like intensity, the Isle of Capri was so close it seemed as if we might touch it, and the long tables were piled with family style platters of southern Italian specialties. Just before leaving, our tour group witnessed my “reunion” with Pietro DeTurris, a man who may or may not be a long-lost relative. The family tree seems to point to a connection, but the line of ancestry really didn’t matter at that point. There, under a Sorrentine sky, my real family, my pilgrim family, and my ancestral family merged, and I felt whole and at home.

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But let me first address something that has come up when I mention this tour to friends and family. Inevitably the first thing they ask is, “How much does it cost?” And when I say $4,999, their eyes glaze over and they say, “Never mind.” So I wanted to talk honestly about this because if you price this tour against other tours, what you find out very quickly is that there is simply no way you are going to get to Italy for 13 days, stay at spa level hotels, have almost all of your meals included, incur no hidden costs, AND take a cooking class, do an olive oil tasting at an agriturismo, a wine tasting at a vineyard, and cap it all off with a boat trip the Blue Grotto on the Isle of Capri for less than this. When Melani over at Travel Overtures says “inclusive,” she’s not kidding around!

Price out airfare and top-of-the-line hotels alone and you’re likely to find that you’re getting close to our cost before you even eat one bowl of pasta, sip one glass of wine, or enter one fabulous museum. And you won’t have an English-speaking tour guide guide taking you step by step through the whole glorious adventure. And if you see other Italy tours that seem to cost less, look at the details. How many nights are you staying? How many meals are included? Is all your in-country transportation and tax covered? What about entry fees to various sights and special events? Yeah, you just won’t find anything like this.

When this pilgrimage possibility came up, Melani told me to “dream big” and spell out what I would consider the perfect pilgrimage to Italy. I came up with the outline of this trip and then Melani took it over the top and made it more than I ever could have hoped for. So know that when you join me on this tour, it’s not simply a “job” for me or even a vacation; it is the culmination of a dream, and I want it to be as close to perfect as possible for all of us.

If you have any questions, email me directly. If you haven’t already liked our Facebook page, click HERE and then click “like” and you’ll receive regular updates, beautiful photos, and other goodies as the trip gets closer. If you want a hardcopy of the brochure, email me your regular mailing address and we’ll get a copy out to you right away.

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