Coach Pilgrimage: Religion, pilgrimage, and tourism in contemporary Romania

Abstract

More than 20 years after the fall of the Communist regime, we are witnessing the unprecedented development of religious pilgrimage in Romania, a country where, according to the latest census, 84 percent of the population self-identify as Orthodox Christian. Apart from the pilgrimages to well-known destinations (Jerusalem, Rome, etc.) organized by the Romanian Patriarchy’s Pilgrimage Bureau, a separate category is the improvised, hybrid pilgrimages, both religious and touristic, organized by individuals using hired minibuses. This type of pilgrimage has been called “coach pilgrimage” in the touristic jargon and mass media. In Romanian Orthodoxy (and in Orthodoxy Church, at large), the “pilgrimage” is understood today as a long wait in a queue. The aim is to touch the shrine containing the relics of a saint. Pilgrimage, as a ritual, is not centered on walking, as in Compostela, for example—a major difference between Eastern and Western Christianity. This article offers an ethnographic description of such a pilgrimage. The focus is on the methods of recruitment of the pilgrims, the choice of the place to be visited, as well as the role of the memory concerning Communism in shaping the pilgrims’ touristic and religious behavior. The analysis of this type of pilgrimages points to new forms of blending of tourism and religious travel, outside established institutional frameworks, as well as to changing notions of pilgrimage, movement, religious practice, and piety. The emergence of new “guiding” patterns and the rise of a new category, the “pilgrimage organizing guides,” are also investigated here.