During this Holy Year of Jubilee, we will be holding at least one Laudato Si’ Mini-Pilgrimage or environmental event in each of the FOUR Seasons of Creation!

Saturday 31 May 2025 will be our Laudato Si’ Mini-Pilgrimage for Spring. After the 12 Noon Mass at Leeds Cathedral, we will set off to walk via the Leeds-Liverpool Canal towpath to Kirkstall Abbey (many thanks to Leeds City Council for generously agreeing free entry to the Abbey ruins for pilgrims walking as part of our group on that day)!

In common with all our diocesan pilgrimages, this walk is fully risk-assessed, so requires all walkers to sign up by contacting communications@dioceseofleeds.org.uk

During the 2025 Holy Year of Jubilee, there will be Laudato Si’ Mini-Pilgrimages to several environmentally-important areas and sacred sites within our Diocese. These include Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds (via the Leeds-Liverpool Canal towpath) and also the Chapel of Our Lady of the Crag and St Robert’s Cave on the banks of the River Nidd at Knaresborough.

Since 2018 our Laudato Si’ Mini Pilgrimages have been celebrations of God’s Creation and of our care for the earth, Our Common Home. They began as short, seasonal, guided walks through Ilkley’s Myddelton Grange estate woodlands to the Calvary led by Estate Manager Paul Elgar who initiated and implemented diocesan conservation projects on the Myddelton site. It is thanks to parishioners at Sacred Heart, Ilkley who came on that first ‘pilgrimage recce’ that proposals for wheelchair-accessible pilgrimages to the Calvary are in progress.

Feel free to get in touch via communications@dioceseofleeds.org.uk with suggestions for Laudato Si’ Pilgrimages in YOUR parish; your ideas will be warmly received! 

These short pilgrimage routes are especially suitable for school groups and the Diocese of Leeds Faith in Action Awards. 

We remember in our prayers the late Paul Elgar, the Myddelton Farm Estate Manager whose conservation knowledge and expertise was so much a part of these mini-pilgrimages: may he rest in peace.