By Mike Cisneros, Pablo Kay, Angelus, OSV News
ALTADENA, Calif. — In the midst of what felt like death and destruction in fire-ravaged Altadena, a spiritual sign of life appeared the evening of Friday, June 20: a monstrance containing the Eucharist carried through the streets in one of the final Eucharistic processions of the 2025 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage.
The pilgrimage, which began in Indianapolis May 18, was spending its final leg June 20-22 in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles after a 3,300-mile cross-country journey. The route included many stops to visit marginalized communities or suffering populations along the way.
One of them was Sacred Heart Church in Altadena, which narrowly escaped destruction from the Eaton Fire in January thanks to heroics from one of its deacons.
After celebrating a 6:30 p.m. Mass at Sacred Heart, Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez carried the monstrance outside and onto Lincoln Avenue.
The other priests and bishops in attendance took the lead walking the streets, followed by Archbishop Gomez, the Sacred Heart choir, and then the hundreds of parishioners, pilgrims and religious leaders following behind.
As the procession turned onto Ventura Street, the devastating effects of the Eaton Fire in January became evident. A faint scent of smoke still hung in the air as the procession crept through. Some of the walkers sang in English and Spanish, others prayed the rosary.
Along the way, the national pilgrimage’s “perpetual pilgrims” — eight men and women who’d followed the pilgrimage from start to finish — and some women religious handed out prayer cards and prayed with onlookers, including a handful living in trailers or RVs on scorched land that once held their homes.
Jeannie Benites, a parishioner at Sacred Heart, told Angelus, the news magazine of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, that she knew the feeling all too well as she walked with the procession with her son. She, too, lost her home in Altadena in the Eaton Fire, but felt soothed being around the other faithful even walking through the destruction anew.
“It comforts my heart and just makes me feel better knowing that I’m surrounded by love,” said Benites, now living in Monrovia, but still attending Sacred Heart. “If I didn’t have God right now in Jesus, I would really be a basket case. It’s just comforted me so much having the church here.”
Nearly six months after wildfires largely wiped out California’s communities of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, those who lived and worked there are still in a state of limbo. They can’t go home, they live in unfamiliar places and often attend other parishes. There are still processes and bureaucracies that mean rebuilding homes and neighborhoods may take years.
On top of that, now that the initial outpouring of support has subsided, some fire victims feel forgotten.
That’s why Tom Costanzo, a parishioner at St. Bede the Venerable Church in nearby La Cañada Flintridge who lost his home in the Eaton Fire, was appreciative that the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage chose to come through Altadena.
“A lot of residents in Altadena feel ignored,” Costanzo told Angelus. “So for the Eucharistic pilgrimage to recognize it — it’s one of the few movements that have recognized this area — is important.”
Costanzo, along with his wife, Theresa, attended a pre-Mass dinner at Sacred Heart held to offer a small measure of consolation for fire victims. On the day the Eaton Fire started, they had just taken their college-bound daughters to the airport before the fire spread so fast that they decided to evacuate. A day later, a neighbor texted them a photo of their house — gone.
There’s so much that they wish they could’ve saved: A blessing from St. John Paul II, a bible handed down for generations, a “hope chest” containing a lot of their family history.
But the couple takes comfort in knowing that they’ve been helped and supported by family, friends and loved ones — including God.
“There are moments where you just feel like, ‘Gee, Altadena was forsaken,'” Theresa Costanzo said. “But there’s a lot of grace, just feeling God. … just trying to see God in each day, in the simple things, in the kindness of people, and to know that he’s with us in that sense.”
At the Mass, Archbishop Gomez was joined by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the U.S., Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, president of the National Eucharistic Congress board, and LA auxiliary bishops and priests.
In his homily, Archbishop Gomez pointed to the Eucharist as an answer to the kind of suffering experienced by Sacred Heart parishioners.
“In the mystery of his will, God sometimes allows the people he loves to suffer,” Archbishop Gomez said. “But never in vain, and never alone. This is the lesson that we hear again and again throughout salvation history. This is the mystery of love that we discover in the Eucharist.”
During the outdoor procession, as the sun began setting — the overhead street lights providing the only illumination — something in the distance beckoned, providing a Star of Bethlehem-like guide for the pilgrims: The lit-up white cross sitting at the top of Sacred Heart Church. Afterwards, the procession ended back in the church for a period of adoration, thus ending the first day of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage in LA.
Annalisa Tapia and Giselle Villegas, two parishioners at St. Gregory the Great Church in Whittier, California, told Angelus they had no connection to Altadena or Sacred Heart. But something drew them to Altadena on Friday night.
“It makes me realize that a lot of my desires are really so small compared to the problems that this community was facing,” Villegas said. “We’re so fortunate to have a roof over our heads, and there’s barely anything left for these homeowners and these families.”
She said, “It just reminds us that we also have to show up for our community. And this is really the best way.”
Before visiting the fire-stricken communities of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage made something of a detour while in Southern California during its final weekend.
After leaving Orange County early on the morning of June 20, the white pilgrimage van carrying a monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament and some of the perpetual pilgrims made the long drive past its final destination, Los Angeles, and up to the seaside town of Ventura for a 1 p.m. Mass at Mission Basilica San Buenaventura.
On such a busy weekend, why Ventura?
“There’s something about taking Jesus to all the parts of the Archdiocese,” Virginia native and perpetual pilgrim Frances Webber, told Angelus.
Webber could speak from experience. For the last five weeks, she and her companions zigzagged through 40 Catholic dioceses in 10 states, accompanying the Blessed Sacrament from Indiana to California. With so many stops to make and people to reach through Masses, works of mercy, and processions, their route didn’t follow anything resembling a straight line.
“Ventura is far enough that many of the people there probably won’t come down on Sunday,” said Webber, referring to the concluding June 22 Corpus Christi Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. “So why not take Jesus to them?”
When the van pulled into the San Buenaventura parking lot, the pilgrims and monstrance were welcomed by a delegation from the Knights of Columbus, together with regional Auxiliary Bishop Slawomir S. Szkredka, San Buenaventura pastor Father Tom Elewaut, and several other priests and deacons.
From there, a short procession brought the Blessed Sacrament into the mission, founded in 1782 by St. Junípero Serra and declared a basilica in July 2020 by Pope Francis.
Inside, Bishop Szkredka took the opportunity during his homily to thank the pilgrims.
“You have given all of us a beautiful illustration of what it means to walk through life with our Eucharistic Lord,” he said.
“Yes, we carry him. But in reality, he carries us,” he said.
Bishop Szkredka compared the pilgrimage to the story of Elijah in the Mass’s first reading, in which the prophet is miraculously given food and water after a tiring journey through the desert, and then fed again before starting a longer journey.
In the same way, Bishop Szkredka, said, the Eucharist serves to refresh a person spiritually after a long day, other times, to strengthen them before a long journey or challenge.
“The Lord knows that on our life journey we need to be refreshed, and we need to be strengthened,” said the bishop.
Among those at the Mass was psychotherapist and counselor Greg Wood, who helped create the Camino de California, an independent pilgrimage effort that began in early June and merged with the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage in San Diego.
Traveling southwards from Northern California, the pilgrimage visited all of California’s 21 Spanish missions, driving between them while stopping for Mass and Eucharistic adoration, walking processions, and opportunities to perform “corporal and spiritual works of mercy” along the way.
One of the pilgrimage’s biggest successes was in San Jose, where more than 2,000 people joined a five-mile Eucharistic procession through the city’s streets.
“People in California need Jesus, and this pilgrimage has been a way of re-sanctifying the route between the 21 missions,” Wood told Angelus.
But Wood’s favorite moment came on the trip’s first day at Sonoma County’s Mission San Francisco Solano, which had not hosted public worship since becoming part of the California Park System in 1906.
“It was literally the first time in 125 years that Jesus had been in the Solano Mission,” said Wood, also the founder of the annual summer St. Junípero Serra Walking Pilgrimage.
As 200 pilgrims processed from a nearby Catholic parish to the mission, they passed a park where Catholic schoolchildren were spending their final day of the school year. Wood said that “every single child and teacher” got down to kneel as the Blessed Sacrament passed.
“Most of us were just in tears seeing that witness,” he said.
While most of the Camino pilgrims had remained in San Diego or Los Angeles June 20, a Ventura resident, who only gave her name as “Susan,” decided to return home and attend the San Buenaventura Mass.
After missing last summer’s National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, Susan said she and a friend “knew in our hearts that we had to be a part of this.”
“It’s just about standing up and speaking out and being present to let others know that our Lord is alive,” said Susan, who spent the pilgrimage praying for family members who’d stopped practicing the Catholic faith, while also embracing the chance to give a public witness of her faith during stops along the route.
By the end, Susan told Angelus she heard Jesus Christ’s personal message to her loud and clear.
“It’s been kind of an affirmation of God saying to me: ‘Daughter, I’m here. I know your journey. I know you want to be led by me, keep on. Keep at it.'”
