The Successful Formula Behind a Fast-Growing French Pilgrimage

The pilgrimage to Brittany’s Sainte-Anne-d’Auray Shrine combines evangelisation, the traditional liturgy and cultural heritage to draw new generations to the faith.

Pilgrims make their way to the St. Anne Shrine in Brittany via the Feiz e Breizh in 2024. (photo: Courtesy of Feiz e Breizh)

A rapidly growing pilgrimage in western France is showing how a new Catholic movement can be successfully founded by focusing on mission, tradition and heritage.

The Feiz e Breizh pilgrimage, meaning “Faith in Brittany,” began in 2017, the initiative of four lay Catholic friends and backed by their local ordinary, Bishop Raymond Centène of Vannes.

“They wanted to create a special event that brings people together by focusing on what is essential: their faith,” said Korantin Denis, the pilgrimage’s current director. “So their objective was to create a family pilgrimage open to everyone.”

The two-day journey, covering 30 to 40 miles at the end of September, concludes at the famous shrine of Sainte-Anne-d’Auray, where the grandmother of Jesus appeared to Yvon Nicolazic in the 17th century — the only recorded and Church-approved apparition of St. Anne, Brittany’s patroness.

“The pilgrimage strengthens the community and draws on the bonds between men and women who share the same roots,” Denis told the traditionalist Pax Liturgica conference at the Vatican last October. “It is about the Gospel renunciation of worldliness. We focus on friendship and sacrifice, stripping away what is secondary in order to concentrate on what is essential.”

Although smaller than major events such as the Chartres pilgrimage, which attracts around 20,000 participants at Pentecost, Feiz e Breizh has grown rapidly. Open to everyone, attendance has risen from 120 pilgrims in its first year to around 2,200 in 2025, making it one of Brittany’s largest Catholic pilgrimages.

Denis attributes this growth to a shared spirit of sacrifice and common effort. “It leads to the virtue of compassion, ‘suffering with’ others, which becomes genuine fraternal charity and mercy,” he explained. “Ultimately, pilgrimage is a journey towards a noble, transcendent goal. During these two days we try to obtain the graces our country needs — graces for our society, our families and ourselves — because the first virtue we seek through prayer is to preserve the faith.”

Families with young children take part.(Photo: Courtesy of Feiz e Breizh)

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