Catholics have always travelled to the saints: to pray where they prayed, to stand at the grave, to ask for help from someone who is, the Church teaches, alive and listening. The practice is older than the Church's great buildings; several of them were built because people were already coming.
Assisi puts eight centuries of holiness in one small town: Francis in his crypt, Clare in hers, and a teenager canonized in 2025 whose tomb now draws more people than either. Rome holds the Apostles, Catherine of Siena, Ignatius, Philip Neri, and St. John Paul II in a side chapel of St. Peter's. Poland holds the places that made Karol Wojtyła and the convent where Faustina wrote her Diary. Lourdes holds Bernadette's grotto, and Nevers, if you go on, holds Bernadette.
Start from the saint. The pages below give each one's story, where he or she can be found, and which of our journeys goes there.
