Few pedestrians were on the sidewalks of Summit and Lexington avenues in St. Paul on the morning of April 22. Fresh snow flurries rested on the frozen ground while a bitter wind swept the Twin Cities.

But the April cold did not deter 14 pilgrims from Minneapolis and St. Paul, who set off from the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and walked a roughly three-mile route to St. Peter Claver in the Rondo neighborhood. They dedicated the walk to racial reconciliation.

“It felt like an unreal event that I had the privilege of hosting and attending,” said Ali Brutus, 24, of Long Island, New York, a first-year student in UST’s Catholic Studies graduate program.

Brutus helped orchestrate the pilgrimage in her role as the Walking Together Fellow for the nonprofit Modern Catholic Pilgrim, which was founded in San Diego in 2017 and now ministers out of both San Diego and St. Paul, where it occupies an office on the University of St. Thomas campus. The organization works to build up a network of pilgrims and hosts that can serve to deepen the faith and solidarity of communities within the Catholic Church.

Will Peterson, founder and president of Modern Catholic Pilgrim, said a pilgrimage is a way to reflect on and pray for a specific intention — in this case, racial justice.

“This pilgrimage stems from our belief that the work toward racial justice and reconciliation is important and necessary for the Catholic Church, and that pilgrimage is a great way to bring together prayer and action in a real way in our tradition,” Peterson said.

Modern Catholic Pilgrim has organized other prayerful walks in the Twin Cities, including a November 2021 two-mile walk for racial justice in Minneapolis, from Ascension to the Basilica of St. Mary.

The pilgrimage organized by Brutus began at 9 a.m. at the UST chapel. After Marta Pereira, associate director of the university’s campus ministry, welcomed the group, Brutus led them in an opening prayer.

Father Lawrence Blake, the chaplain and director of campus ministry at UST, read Luke 24:13-35, which recounts the encounter between the Apostles and Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Brutus delivered a short reflection on the passage, connecting the walk of the apostles to the walk that the group was about to undertake.

The group prayed a “Litany for Racial Justice,” which was first recited at a June 2, 2020, prayer service on the John Carroll University campus near Cleveland, Ohio. The group then walked two miles to St. Thomas More, where they stopped for prayer and water. Four pilgrims joined the journey there, including three seminarians from The St. Paul Seminary and St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul. With a blessing from Jesuit Father R.J. Fichtinger, pastor of St. Thomas More, the pilgrims set out again.

After a blustery, mile walk via Lexington Avenue and then over Interstate 94, the pilgrims landed at their final destination, St. Peter Claver church. The parish’s patron saint, a Spanish Jesuit missionary to South America, is considered the patron saint of slaves. The parish has served Black Catholics in St. Paul since 1892, the parish website says.

Once at St. Peter Claver, the pilgrims offered their intentions for the walk — which they had written on small pieces of paper at the beginning of the pilgrimage — at the Mary altar in the church.

Those who made the journey, 18 in total, said the pilgrimage was intensely meaningful.

Seminarian Brady Martinez, 21, who is in his second year at SJV, said his belief in the universality of the Church moved him to take part.

“It has been a movement in my heart, I think, to show the universal love of Christ, that it is not just for a particular group of people, but that it is for everyone,” he said. “Especially for the Catholic Church, to show that love and to invite people of all races and from everywhere.”

Kylie Watts, 22, a senior at UST with a major in psychology and family studies and a minor in communications, said she attended the event with an eye toward a career in clinical psychology.

“As someone who is going to go into the mental health field and as someone who holds a lot of privileged identities, it is really important for me to learn about the history and culture of people who hold marginalized identities and a lot of that is participating in these racial justice events,” said Watts, who is white.

Benita Amedee, 57, a parishioner of St. Peter Claver for 25 years who was originally from Iowa, said she was a panelist at an April 18 event connected to the pilgrimage, where she shared her experience of being a Black Catholic. The event, the Walking Together Panel, was also organized by Brutus for the Modern Catholic Pilgrim and was hosted in the Iverson Center for Faith on the UST campus. About 15 people were at the event, which was moderated by Father Christoper Collins, vice president for mission at the university.

“We are asked to do really difficult things from the Church, and why wouldn’t racial justice be part of it?” said Amedee. “I really enjoyed just getting to know people and being connected in that way, bringing the churches together.”