To everyone’s great surprise – and to the great delight of the city of Compostela and all who love the Camino de Santiago – the Vatican announced Holy Year of 2021 will be extended until December 2022.
(The previous episode of Walking Out of the World was Day 42, Meeting the Worcester Pilgrim in Saint-Jean d’Angely. The next post will continue the journey to Saintes.)
The Compostela Holy Year happens when July 25th, the feast day of the Apostle’s martyrdom, falls on a Sunday. Due to leap years,the Holy Years follow a pattern of falling every 6-5-6-11 years. 2010 was the most recent Holy Year. (Thus 2021 is a Holy Year, followed by 2027 and 2032.) When the Vatican announced that this year’s Jacobean Holy Year would be extended and last for two years the news caught everyone by surprise. It had been a well-guarded secret! The photograph below shows the opening of the door which is only opened for Holy Years.
The extended timetable will undoubtedly contribute towards greater safety on the Camino in 2021 and reduce the pressure on the infrastructure of the pilgrim routes – already damaged economically by the lock down and absence of travellers in 2020 – and it will allow a greater time for pilgrims to plan to make their journeys safely. The official Xacobeo 2021 website is here in English: Xacobeo 2021 – Find Out Everything About the Holy Year – Pilgrim
The following video is the entire two hour ceremony of the opening of the Holy Door and the inauguration of the Xacobeo 2021.
CONTACTS FOR XACOBEO 2021
Email info@pilgrim.es
Phone number +34 912 913 756
Information Camino de Santiago
Equus Asinus 
I am glad for the many pilgrims who will now have an extended opportunity in 2021-2022 and I am also very pleased for those many villages of “España vaciada” – emptied rural Spain – into which had been breathed a precarious new life since the revival of the Camino de Santiago. Not just places like Foncebadón (once famous for being a dangerous place of wild dogs and uninhabited ruins but now a viable community), but so many other small and medium sized villages and towns that had become economically kick-started by a new pilgrim presence.
The individual pilgrim, or couple, or family in Spain who make their way up the Camino de la Plata, the Camino de Levante, etc. are consciously going to be playing their part in the regeneration of the caminos and their infrastructure, after the pandemic, and once again making sure the tradition is kept for future generations.
Yes, our own individual Camino plans are precious to us, but the public intention here in Spain in the Xacobeo 2021 is now to support the continuity of the tradition, and that is now a matter of life and death for some rural communities centred on a Camino economy. So that is why I am so pleased about the Vatican’s extension of Xacobeo into 2022.
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