Travel agencies and priests as spiritual leaders: The merits of collaboration

Introduction

Wherever the Catholic Church has been established, pilgrimages to places where the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared have become important over the last several centuries, never more so than at the present time (Zimdars-Swartz, 1991). On the other hand, the Catholic Church seems to be losing its traditional adherents. How are these phenomena related? The general decline of the Church’s monopoly of the sacred and the expanding “pluralism of religious convictions” (Luckmann, 1997[1967]) in European societies may be seen as promoting factors for popular religious practices such as pilgrimage (Kerševan and Flere, 1995; Delakorda Kawashima, 2014). Probably different, and contradictory, “transformations of religiosity” (Pickel and Sammet, 2012) stimulate pilgrimages in Slovenia; for example, an individual’s search for the sacred outside institutional religion, as well as communal devotions aimed at the reaffirmation of traditional Christian values and cultural identity. In such a socio-religious constellation, popular culture, and touristic advertising in particular, may promote religious practices through pilgrimage. However, mass tourism to pilgrimage shrines as a specifically modern phenomenon is often held to lead to secularization (Cohen, 2004: 156, cited in Timothy and Olsen, 2006: 13). ¹ Such thinking is based on a traditional assumption that religious diversity or multiplicity (as a consequence of tourism) leads to the collapse of religious authenticity structures, an assumption that few studies have actually attempted to prove (Stausberg, 2011: 46). Recent studies have shown the opposite—that the presence of tourists at sacred places can, in the eyes of believing and non-believing visitors, aid in the promotion of the religious “authenticity” of the pilgrimage place (Delakorda Kawashima, 2014; Reader, 2014). According to these studies, it is more likely that religious tourism actually increases the attractiveness of sacred places. The case study presented in this article shows that organization and guidance to/at a pilgrimage site provided by a travel agency can revitalize religious practice.

The focus here is on a pilgrimage guided by a professional spiritual leader—a church priest, hired by a travel agency. I examine how such a pilgrimage is organized and advertised to the public. As the organization of the pilgrimage predominantly rests on the travel agency, attention will be paid to the tour manager/leader with 23 years of experience in the field of religious tourism. I analyze the tour program to Medjugorje that his agency has developed and its possible impact on the culture of pilgrimage in Slovenia. Finally, I describe the ways the priest and the tour leader negotiate their roles of guiding with a particular focus on the priest as a spiritual leader.

The general stance of the Roman Catholic Church toward tourism

The Second Vatican Council has acknowledged that tourism, “by encouraging relaxation of the spirit, nourishes certain aspects of personality which otherwise would remain quite impaired” (www.vatican.va). ² In 1969, the Pontifical Council issued a document, Peregrinans in terra, General Directory for the Pastoral Care of Tourism, and in 2001, it published the Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of Tourism. Its plea for evangelization of and through tourism is clearly expressed in the following:

Pastors of souls and prudent Christians are obliged to do everything they can to make sure that leisure time becomes a time when men [sic] show greater appreciation for their economic, cultural, emotional and spiritual affluence, and dedicate themselves to turning tourist time into a time of eternal salvation. […] The evangelization of this contemporary “social phenomenon” is a task Incumbent on the whole People of God, both clergy and laity, according to their station. It should make clear the new dimensions of charity, and our solicitude for the new form and structure of the Christian community that tourism is helping to vitalize, expand and transform. ³

In the documents and reports from the meetings on the pastoral care of tourism we can see a rather hasty adaptation of the Church to the new social circumstances brought about by the phenomenon of tourism. However, putting its views into practice at the local level appears to provoke unease. In its instructions to parishes the Church keeps cautioning that “the pastoral care of tourism is not an ‘optional,’” it is obligatory. ⁴

Nevertheless, tasks in this specific aspect of pastoral care seem to differ with regard to tourism in general, tourism to Christian places, and tourism of the faithful. Church collaboration with tourist agencies that I discuss in this article can be understood as a part of the tasks which the Church has entrusted to the Episcopal conferences. Episcopal conferences establish concrete conditions and procedures for pastoral work and delegate a priest to examine the local pastoral needs of tourism, whereas for the pastoral work itself, parishes are encouraged to make use of both trained priests and lay experts. ⁵ This instruction allows the priests to collaborate with laymen and secular agencies, including travel agencies, in order to promote their pastoral work. Here I will examine how pastoral care functions through guiding, and in particular how priests function as guides.

The role of a tour leader

Various kinds of tourist guides have emerged as mediators between travelers and sacred sites. The guide provides access to, information about, and interpretation of specific attractions (such as religious buildings), whereas the tour leader/manager gives leadership to the group, a process that involves issues such as control, integration, morale, and organization (Cohen, 1985: 11–6; Stausberg, 2011: 196–97). ⁶ When performing all these roles, tourist guides and tour leaders significantly affect the interpretation of pilgrimage sites, particularly when they guide “tourist-like” pilgrims keen to acquire new knowledge of the place where they travel. The tour leaders’ knowledge is drawn from their own understanding of pilgrimage and religion and is informed by various sources including brochures, guidebooks, the Internet, and by their rich experience of past pilgrimages to various sites, such as Lourdes, Fatima, and Israel, where they have enhanced their knowledge about pilgrimage by learning from other guides and pilgrims. Such “first-hand” knowledge and experiences give authority to a tour leaders’ leadership. ⁷

I refer here to licensed guides of a travel agency as “tour leaders,” because their most important tasks include management of itineraries and because they give leadership to the group. I further analyze the role of a tour leader as a leader and a mediator, in the sense developed by Cohen (1985).

Case study: pastoral care of Medjugorje with the help of travel agencies

Since 1981, Medjugorje has evolved into one of the most renowned shrines to the Virgin Mary worldwide, receiving almost 2 million visitors in 2013. ⁸ Medjugorje used to be a small, unknown village in the heart of Herzegovina area of Bosnia-Herzegovina (then a part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) before the first apparitions of the Virgin Mary “Gospa” were reported. Since then, Gospa has continued appearing daily to three of the visionaries. ⁹ However, the authenticity of Mary’s ongoing apparitions in Medjugorje is among the most contentious topics in the contemporary Roman Catholic Church (Margry, 2010: 1849). ¹⁰

The fact that the Church has not (yet) recognized Medjugorje as a sacred place has considerably complicated the work of the shrine organizers, the Franciscan Order. First, the Order is in dispute with the local diocesan bishop, who should be in control of this parish according to Church rules. Typically, the Franciscan friars do not “own” parishes, but rather staff them for local dioceses. However, the Franciscans have been the only Catholic presence in Herzegovina for hundreds of years. They have controlled land, monasteries, and schools in the Herzegovian area, while other Catholic authorities, such as the Mostar diocese, arrived only recently in the area and yet have been claiming authority over more and more church land and parishes including Medjugorje. This situation is believed to be the reason why the bishop in Mostar has condemned the events in Medjugorje (Belaj, 2012). The official stance of the diocesan bishop and the Vatican has been based on the Bishop’s Conference of Yugoslavia held in Zadar in 1991, which asserted as follows: “It cannot be established that one is dealing with supernatural apparitions and revelations” (Dugandžić 2002: 48); “Therefore official pilgrimages to Medjugorje should not be arranged neither at a parish nor at an Episcopal level” (ibid.), since the Church does not allow either to organize pilgrimages to unrecognized sites. However, the numerous gatherings of the faithful from different parts of the world require attention and pastoral care (ibid.). For this reason, church officials around the world have resorted to describing their guiding of pilgrims to Medjugorje as “pastoral care.” ¹¹

It is precisely this situation that has allowed tourist agencies to assume such an important role in organizing pilgrimage and in presenting and promoting Medjugorje as a pilgrimage site. Priestly guidance to any place on earth is, as established through the Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of Tourism, a church mission without borders. However, priestly guidance, at least of the pilgrims to the unofficial sacred site of Medjugorje, is enabled—if not inevitably dependent on—on the mediation of secular agencies and institutions as well as on their professional staff and guides, who are qualified to undertake tourist package tours. Thus, in this particular case, travel agencies are filling a gap which, in other places of pilgrimage, would be covered by the church hierarchy.

That a relatively high percentage of pilgrims visit Medjugorje through the organization of a travel agency is revealed in questionnaire research carried out in Medjugorje. Results show that most pilgrims from abroad come to Medjugorje by bus, while most pilgrims from neighboring Croatia arrive in their own cars. More than 80 percent of domestic and Croatian pilgrims, and 10 percent of pilgrims from other countries, visited Medjugorje only. Foreign pilgrims tend to visit two to three other places near Medjugorje. They stay in Medjugorje, but in recent times a sizeable number of groups have come on a one-day bus trip during the weekend (Madžar, 2010: 107–108). Not surprisingly, fewer than 9 percent of pilgrims came via the parish church (Madžar, 2010: 117). More than 40 percent came with travel agencies for the third or fourth time, and more than 63 percent of pilgrims visited Medjugorje four times or more (Madžar, 2010; Krešić et al., 2012). According to tourist agencies in Medjugorje and Bijakovići, they mostly receive enquiries about providing accommodation for one busload, that is, for 50 beds. Compared to the period of initial apparitions, when the only accommodation available was in local private houses, which could only accept up to five guests, and 1989, when most newly built accommodation facilities offered 15–30 beds, by 2002, almost 60 percent of these places had enlarged their capacity to 30–50 beds (Madžar, 2010: 102). ¹²

Promotion of pilgrimage to Medjugorje by Slovenian tourist agencies

It is noteworthy that pilgrimage is so popular in Slovenia, a country often referred to as one of the most “secular” in Europe. ¹³ In Slovenia, formerly a part of Yugoslavia, there has been a steady decline in trust in the Roman Catholic Church since independence. While 54 percent of the population describe themselves as Roman Catholic, they rarely attend religious services (Toš, 2012: 67–69). ¹⁴ The number of new religious movements is growing, but there is a rather low membership in all kinds of organized religion (Črnič, 2001; Müller, 2008). In general, affiliation with organized Christianity appears to be in decline, while pilgrimage to the numerous domestic and foreign religious sites seems to be flourishing. ¹⁵ It could be said that in Slovenia, where organized religion and the Church in particular continue to have negative connotations, ¹⁶ travel agencies play a significant role as mediators, not only between people and religious sites but also between people and priests. Travel agencies launch pilgrimages led by so-called “spiritual leaders”—priests, who have been gaining in popularity as leaders of pilgrim groups. The Catholic Church and travel agencies collaborate here in an effective symbiosis. By providing a pilgrimage combined with leisure, they seem to contribute to the popularization of Christianity in Slovenia.

I focus on the group pilgrimages to Medjugorje. In Slovenia, these have been provided by different intermediators such as the lay spiritual leaders of various self-organized prayer groups, the parish priests, and the travel agencies. Parish priests organize (informal) “parish pilgrimages,” relying on private transportation companies. Travel agencies organize two forms of pilgrimage: one for the parishioners of a church (on their request or as an offer to them on the initiative of the agency) and the other as a “catalogue pilgrimage” when the travel agency designs an itinerary open for everyone.

In Slovenia, there are 100 tourist agencies which offer a visit to Medjugorje several times per year. Almost all of them (98%) offer a 1-day visit to Medjugorje in combination with other places and attractions. Some 40 percent of tourist agencies advertise the trip to Medjugorje as a pilgrimage or as a journey with religious activities and an overnight stay in Medjugorje (Beguš, 2013: 145–51). Among the most frequent religious activities in Medjugorje are climbing Crnica (the Apparition Hill) and Križevac (Cross Mountain), attending Holy Mass in Crkva Sv. Jakova (St. James Church), prayer, confession, and visiting community Cenacolo. These journeys are guided by professional tour leaders provided by travel agencies. In addition to a tour leader, five of these travel agencies—Aritours, Qua Vadis, Orel Celje, Tuintam, and Trud—also provide a spiritual leader, that is, a priest, a bishop, or a member of one of the Catholic Orders. Their programs, too, always include visits to other attractions, including picking mandarin oranges and a boat trip on the lake in Neretva Valley. ¹⁷

Organization of pilgrimage by Aritours travel agency

I focus here on Aritours travel agency, one of the leading providers of pilgrimage in Slovenia since the country gained independence in 1991. Aritours leads 200 pilgrims annually to Medjugorje and more than 2500 pilgrims to various other pilgrimage destinations. ¹⁸ Special attention will be paid to the agency’s organization of the pilgrimage to Medjugorje and to the guiding performed by its tour managers/leaders in conjunction with priests. Since the first apparitions of Mary in Medjugorje, people in Slovenia began to form numerous self-organized prayer and pilgrimage groups that have set out to Medjugorje, led by lay leaders. ¹⁹ The travel agency, Aritours, however, was the first organization in Slovenia that offered a pilgrimage led by a religious and a secular professional leader, that is, a Catholic priest and a tour leader.

All the data about the functioning of Aritours travel agency were collected through qualitative interviews with the agency’s owner Ciril, and the agency’s manager, his daughter Tanja, as well as with some of the pilgrims who traveled with them. Aritours is a family company in which Ciril, his wife, and their daughter jointly manage the agency, as well as lead several travels and pilgrimages as licensed tourist guides. As explained above, I will refer to them as “tour leaders.” The interviews were conducted on several occasions during March–July 2014.

Parish pilgrimages and pilgrimages by catalogue

Generally, Aritours organizes two variants of such a pilgrimage for two different target groups. One is the so-called parish pilgrimage (after its predecessor), organized for (and on behalf of) closed groups of parishioners under the spiritual leadership of their pastor. The other is the so-called pilgrimage by catalogue designed for individuals or groups with a spiritual leader provided by the agency.

Both types are organized as group pilgrimages on bus, guided by a priest and a tour leader. However, they differ significantly in the ways the agency approaches the two target groups. Parish pilgrimages are organized either on the request of a priest and his parishioners or are offered by the agency first to a priest and then to his parishioners. Whether parishioners of a particular parish will or will not go therefore heavily depends on the priest’s approval. According to Ciril, many priests refuse pilgrimage a priori. ²⁰

All Aritours pilgrimages ensure a tour leader and a spiritual leader. A tour leader takes care of delivering historical and other facts, points of interest, and organization on the journey, while a spiritual leader—who is always a priest—takes care of the spiritual ministry, Mass, and other devotions. According to Ciril, “the intensity of the spiritual content varies and largely depends on the ‘dedication’ of a spiritual leader.”

Catalogue pilgrimages are the agency’s creation. Ciril designs the majority of programs based on his knowledge of pilgrimage and religious sites which he acquired from theological literature and encyclopedias. These are then promoted to the public through various media including the agency’s promotional materials such as posters, catalogues, newspaper advertisements, radio, and the Internet. The agency has recently started publishing its own newsletter “Naše vezi” (Our bonds), available on an official website and distributed in print to approximately 10,000 locations, including churches. It should be mentioned that Ciril, as a former theology student, operates in a rich network of his ordained colleagues (i.e. priests) with whom he often reviews the pilgrimage program and other contemporary issues concerned with the Church.

As shown in Table 1, the Aritours catalogue on pilgrimage to Medjugorje is currently offered as “Medjugorje and mandarin picking.” ²¹ While picking mandarins has only recently appeared on their program, they had previously offered pilgrimage to Medjugorje in a travel package with visits to various tourist attractions, such as Mostar, Dubrovnik, and Sarajevo, including social activities such as boating on Lake Neretva. ²²

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Table 1.

Aritours priest-guided catalogue pilgrimage to Medjugorje.

Programme title: “Medjugorje and mandarin picking” Presentation of Medjugorje: “On the 24 June 1981, in a small Herzegovinian village, Mary appeared to six children for the first time and through them called people to repentance and prayer for peace, hence her name “the Queen of Peace.” Since then, millions of pilgrims have visited this place of prayer, hope, gratitude … many find their place of spirituality and peace here. Tens of thousands of young people gather each year at the youth festival, in the “Mother’s Village” many orphaned children found their new home, in the communes they were healed of addictions … this is happening in a place where the heaven has touched the earth.” Programme: 1. Day: Murska Sobota (East Slovenia)—Medjugorje 2. Day: Medjugorje 3. Day: Medjugorje—Neretva Valley (mandarin picking/boating on the lake) - Murska Sobota Duration: 3 Days/2 Nights Activities in Medjugorje: (1.Day) “After settling in a good guesthouse in the city center, climbing Crnica, where the Mary first appeared; joining the crowd in the parish church at the evening prayer of the Rosary and common Mass; a dinner and overnight stay.” (2.Day) “After Mass, ascending to Križevac, high hill above the village, where on the 1900th anniversary of the death of the Christ a large cross was erected, performing Cross devotion during the climb to the top. After lunch, paying a visit to former addicts in the commune Cenacolo for curing of drug addictions, hearing their personal testimonies. Afternoon free for independent sightseeing, personal devotions, souvenirs purchasing, etc. Dinner and overnight stay in Medjugorje. Activities following Medjugorje: (3.Day) After the Mass service farewell from Medjugorje and driving in an idyllic valley of the Neretva River, where we enjoy the beautiful view of green trees full of fragrant and juicy mandarins. Welcome by the musicians and aperitif, and then the ride with special “Neretva” boats through the picturesque canals of the river Neretva and picking mandarins in one of the many plantations. Finally, a good lunch and we’re on our way home. Passing Split, Zadar, and Zagreb returning back toward places of departure in the late night hours. (www.Aritours.si)

This is a typical program for Medjugorje offered by the travel agency Aritours at their official website and similar variations are provided by few other tourist agencies.

Pilgrims’ demands for spiritual reinvigoration and care

According to Aritours’ manager, most of the pilgrims go on pilgrimage to Medjugorje for spiritual reasons. According to previous research, religious or spiritual motivation—such as a lost connection with God and the compassion of the Mother Mary—are among the most common motives for the pilgrimage to Medjugorje (Madžar, 2010; Belaj, 2012; Beguš, 2013; Delakorda Kawashima, 2014). Pilgrims may be motivated by a deep faith, a sense of being drawn to a place and an encounter with what they perceive as the sacred, but their expectations seem to be shaped by the travel agency and the tourism industry at large. Recently, according to Ciril, “increasing numbers of non-church goers apply for the pilgrimage offered at the agency not for the sake of visiting the pilgrimage site but because they liked the non-religious part of the programme included in the pilgrimage.” ²³

Customers applying for pilgrimage are also very demanding about their tour leaders. For example, they often ask for pilgrimage as an “educational experience” (Cohen, 2006). These individuals or groups expect their tour leader to be well-educated and qualified as a teacher or a professor of history or religion. Extant research indicates that many groups choose guides who share their own religious preferences and structure the trips to their own needs and expectations (Olsen and Timothy, 2006: 10; Stausberg, 2011: 197). “Our customers expect from their leader to merge with the group,” says Ciril. “If the tour leader cannot cross him/herself (because he/she is not religious) people notice this. It is not obligatory that a tour leader should be a religious person, but he/she must know how to behave properly and adapt to a pilgrim group.” Aritours’ leaders are excellent professional guides who give our travels and pilgrimages “soul,” says Tanja, the agency’s manager; she is convinced that their pilgrimages are different from others, which are organized by other agencies or even priests, “who are not qualified for travel business.” The agency, Aritours, has very high and demanding criteria for the tour leaders who are to lead their pilgrim groups. Tanja explains, “A national license for a guide is not sufficient precondition for Aritours guides.” Among the most important characteristics of their tour leaders as acknowledged by pilgrims are knowledge of religious history, experience, personality, and approachability (www.Aritours.si). “We connect people on our pilgrimages, and create a large family,” says Tanja. “People take pilgrimage for various reasons, but the important thing is that the pilgrimage fulfills their most urgent needs.” It appears this is often a desire for a sociable environment where people feel understood. The mediator role of a tour leader is then not only to reduce friction with the environment (Cohen, 1985) but to serve as a catalyst for spiritual progress. Thus, the agency can request that the tour leader crosses himself or herself at Mass, as part of an adequate performance.

Because travel agencies work in a highly competitive market, they must create a product that others cannot provide. To offer a pilgrimage instead of an ordinary journey already adds to the journey’s value. For pilgrims, a very important asset of a pilgrimage appears to be the leader, his or her charisma, and the ability to give a vivid presentation (see also Stausberg, 2011: 198). In addition, for the pilgrims I talked to, a memorized presentation by a tourist guide cannot compare with the vivid and profound explanation that only a spiritual leader, the priest, can provide: “Unlike ‘superficial’ pilgrimages without their own spiritual leader, pilgrimages with their own leader are a true spiritual reinvigoration.” From such comments of pilgrims, we can conclude it is the quality of the spiritual care that is the most highly appreciated asset in the market of pilgrimages.

The role of mediation

People who opt for Aritours catalogue pilgrimage want a spiritual leadership legitimized in full by the Church, that is, an ordained Catholic priest and at the same time a rather cozy and relaxed pilgrimage. Interestingly, it seems that the agency, in collaboration with the Catholic priest, is actually able to offer a more relaxed pilgrimage than the one offered by a lay spiritual leader. As mentioned, in Slovenia, which is only 500 km away from Medjugorje, people opt for pilgrimage to Medjugorje through various intermediaries and pilgrim groups. ²⁷ There are many Catholic prayer groups in Slovenia devoted to Mary that were initiated from Medjugorje, ²⁸ as well as the “self-organized” groups which organize pilgrimages to Medjugorje led by female lay spiritual leaders belonging to the Franciscan Church, already discussed elsewhere (Delakorda Kawashima, 2012). On the basis of my participation in such a pilgrimage and on the evidence of interviews with pilgrims who regularly attend pilgrimages led by a female lay spiritual leader, I find that her guiding practices closely follow the prescribed pilgrimage path and rely on the local priests and interpretations in Medjugorje (Delakorda Kawashima, 2012). Comparing lay-guided pilgrimage to the one offered by the travel agency, Aritours, I would describe it as rather “orthodox,” despite the fact that the latter takes place under the spiritual guidance of a priest, while the former does not. For the Church, collaborating with the professional tour leader and entrusting the organization of pilgrimage to a travel agency enables it to reach both believing and non-believing participants.

Yet, what difference is there for pilgrims between the lay and priestly spiritual leaders? Pilgrims require a spiritual leader who prepares them spiritually, relying on Christian texts and prayers. One would expect that prospective pilgrims on tourist agency pilgrimages would ask for an ordained Catholic priest who can provide the established rituals during the pilgrimage process such as prayer and Mass. However, it appears in most cases that it is his “approachability and a human face” that is more important. On the other hand, pilgrims led by a lay spiritual leader more fervently cling to and rely on authoritative mediators such as religious texts, prayers, Mass, confessions, and (local) priests. Throughout the lay-led pilgrimage to Medjugorje, the lay spiritual leader was continuously referring to the blessings which a Franciscan priest had specifically offered to her pilgrimage group as well as those offered by the local priest who was expecting them in Medjugorje. She also used and activated all the other mediators that constituted the pilgrimage experience, for example, chapters from the Bible, prayers, and messages by the Mary of Medjugorje for spiritual preparations on the bus and spiritual mediation at Medjugorje. The spiritual preparations activated by the blessing of pilgrims on bus “gained ground” in Medjugorje where the pilgrimage continued on foot, under the guidance of the spiritual leader, who further mediated between the pilgrims and the sacred locations, interpreting them in line with the Church’s interpretations. Finally, the pilgrims were encouraged to attend Mass in the local parish and confess their sins to the local priest.

These guiding performances indicate that a priest, sacred place, and prayers may serve to legitimate the role of the lay leader. In this case, person, place, and text triad may be intrinsic elements of pilgrimage (Eade and Sallnow, 1991) in that they empower the leader to forge links with the sacred. These sources, however, were less apparent in a priest-led pilgrimage, presumably because he provided the religious authority simply by his presence. It was he in person who provided mediation with the sacred.

Conclusion

Comparing differing demands of pilgrims (parish tours as opposed to catalogue tours and lay-led tours) in their interactions with spiritual leaders can help us clarify the importance of mediation, not merely as a way of encouraging social relations and avoiding friction with the foreign environment, but (in pilgrimage) as one way of forging links with the sacred.

After Slovenia’s independence, when group religious pilgrimages became more freely organized, pilgrimage practices have revitalized together with religious tourism. From the experience of the travel agency, Aritours, we learned that they were greater promoters of pilgrimage than the churches and the priests at that time. In addition to parish pilgrimages, organized in the modest framework of a closed rigorous pilgrimage to the shrine, the agency in collaboration with priests offered the so-called catalogue pilgrimage for a wider public regardless of a specific church group, community, or prayer group. The attractive program of the catalogue pilgrimage included visits to other places of tourist attraction and enjoyable experiences such as picking mandarins, a boat ride on the Neretva River, local food, and accommodation in hotels. The agency resorted to a tourist flavoring of the pilgrimage to gain wider acceptance on the market, but their main asset, next to a good tour leader, turned out to be a priestly spiritual leader.

Such a trip was especially established as a legitimate form of pilgrimage to Medjugorje, even for the Church and the Church officials, who themselves were not permitted to organize it. The Church entrusted the organization of pilgrimages to the lay faithful and other intermediaries, including the travel agencies, while the priests accompanied and led these pilgrimages as the pilgrims’ pastoral carers. The particular space created for travel agents in Medjugorje by the Church’s incomplete recognition of the site illustrates how local and international (church) politics and tourism interact.

This collaboration might well endure and even regenerate as a result of the intensifying demands that pilgrims demonstrate in their choice of certain priests. Tourist agencies are competing for the priests. They are encouraging steady, friendly relationships between the agency, their pilgrims, and clergy by organizing post-pilgrimage meetings and social events. Through the pilgrimage (and a priest) as a medium, they successfully address urgent (less religious) individuals’ needs for companionship and conversation. As noted by Aritours’ manager Tanja: “The way we do our job, which is aimed at a fellow human being, a personal approach, honesty, love, and connection, pays off. Therefore, people trust us and continue to go on pilgrimage with us.” In this way, the agency returns a kind of profit back to the community (Shinde, 2010; Yasuda, 2014), as well as providing a place and context away from the official church, for a newer kind of pilgrimage culture centered on the popular priest as spiritual leader. Priests (and other spiritual leaders for that matter) use pilgrimage as an opportunity to guide people’s memory toward regeneration of Christian practice. Guiding pilgrimage through tourism appears to be an effective way for the Church to recruit new uncommitted members or at least to provide an effective way for practicing Christianity in contemporary Slovenia.