9 ‘perpetual pilgrims’ to travel patriotic East Coast route in 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage

Nine young adults have been selected as “perpetual pilgrims” to travel with the Eucharist along the East Coast this summer in the third National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. The pilgrims — five men and four women — will participate in the pilgrimage’s full route, which begins May 24 in Florida and reaches Maine before ending in Philadelphia July 5 for U.S. semiquincentennial celebrations.

The pilgrims include Zachary Dotson, a parish employee in Indiana; Marcel Ferrer, a sophomore at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio; John Paul Flynn, sophomore at The Catholic University of America in Washington; Eduardo Gutierrez, an accountant in Phoenix; Cheyenne Johnson, a missionary in New Jersey; Angelina Marconi, a college athletic trainer in Kentucky; Raymond Martinez II, a seminarian for the Diocese of San Angelo, Texas; Sharon Phillips, a high school youth minister in the Archdiocese of Seattle; and Mary Carmen Zakrajsek, a youth faith formation director in Indiana.

With four routes that met in Indianapolis, the 2024 pilgrimage included 30 pilgrims. Last year’s pilgrimage included eight. Johnson was among the 2025 perpetual pilgrims, and she is returning this year as the team lead. Last year’s pilgrimage also included a returning pilgrim who had traveled one of the 2024 routes to serve as team lead.

With the theme “One Nation Under God,” the 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage route celebrates key Catholic landmarks and events in American Catholic history as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary. The pilgrimage’s route includes public events in 18 dioceses and archdioceses in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Registration for public events such as Masses, Eucharistic processions, adoration and Holy Hours opens March 18 at eucharisticpilgrimage.org.

The pilgrimage will launch Memorial Day weekend with Mass at Our Lady of La Leche Shrine at Mission Nombre De Dios in St. Augustine, Florida, the site of the first Mass celebrated on American soil in 1565. It will also include commemorations of the Georgia Martyrs, five Franciscan missionaries who were killed for their faith in 1597, whose beatification is expected Oct. 31; the celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi in the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia; and stops in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the nation’s first Catholic diocese.

The route is dedicated to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, an Italian-American religious sister who cared for the immigrants and poor in New York during the turn of the 20th century.

The National Eucharistic Congress nonprofit organizes the pilgrimage, which first took place in 2024 ahead of the 10th National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis as part of the National Eucharistic Revival, and which returned last summer with a route from Indianapolis to Los Angeles.

This year’s pilgrimage will take place in solidarity with the U.S. bishops’ call to consecrate the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It also aims to broadly involve the Church in the U.S. through a campaign to offer 250,000 Holy Hours “for the renewal and blessing of America,” according to its website.

Dioceses and archdioceses with stops along the route are St. Augustine; Savannah, Ga.; Charleston, S.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; Arlington, Va.; Washington; Baltimore; Wilmington, Del.; Camden, N.J.; Paterson, N.J.; Springfield, Mass.; Manchester, N.H.; Portland, Maine; Boston; Fall River, Mass.; Providence, R.I.; and Philadelphia.

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