Pope Leo to address National Eucharistic Pilgrimage during closing Mass in Philadelphia

(OSV News) — The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage ends July 5 with a closing Mass, procession and celebration in Philadelphia, which will begin with a special video message from Pope Leo XIV.

Pope Leo will speak to “pilgrims gathered in Philadelphia, those participating virtually, and the larger Church in the United States of America, and to viewers around the world as the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding,” according to a June 29 announcement from the National Eucharistic Congress Inc., which organizes the national pilgrimage.

“Pope Leo XIV’s message will come at a moment of particular significance for Catholics in the United States,” according to the statement. “The Holy Father will offer a word of spiritual closeness, peace, unity, and hope, inviting the faithful to look to Christ in the Eucharist as the source of communion and renewal.”

The pope’s message will be shared at the opening of the 2026 pilgrimage’s final Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul, scheduled for 11 a.m., with Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez presiding.

After the Mass, pilgrims will process with the Eucharist for about 2 miles to the National Shrine of St. John Neumann at St. Peter the Apostle Church, where St. John Neumann — the fourth bishop of Philadelphia and a champion of Catholic education — is entombed. Benediction at the church will be followed by a reception and celebration on the shrine grounds concluding this year’s pilgrimage.

As the pilgrimage entered its final week, a “perpetual pilgrim” traveling this year’s full East Coast route reflected on how the experience is now familiar, yet remains fresh.

Quoting St. Augustine’s famous axiom praising God as “beauty ever ancient, ever new,” Sharon Phillips, a pilgrim and youth minister in the Archdiocese of Seattle, said, “These words of St. Augustine’s prayer to God are heavy on my mind as we approach the final week of this Eucharistic Pilgrimage.”

“Here in week five, much of the exciting novelty has shifted into a daily familiarity,” she wrote in a June 28 blog post for OSV News. “I remember my first moments in the van and how surreal it was having Our Lord in the tabernacle before us; then I think how just today it was second nature to genuflect as I exited the van. At this point in pilgrimage, I’m encountering Jesus in the ancient, as I see his steady and grounding Presence that has been there from the start.”

Yet, she wrote, “Even with the familiarity that we’ve developed, I’m relieved by the reminder that every moment is new in the Lord, and He has graces for this final week of pilgrimage that are new and different from the things that have passed so far. I still can encounter that wonder at being so close to Jesus in the van, and I can still renew my commitment to be a pilgrim seeking to be closer in every moment.”

After a weekend in the Archdiocese of Boston June 26-28, Philips and her eight fellow perpetual pilgrims began the final week of the 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage in the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, June 29-30 and the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, June 30-July 2.

The pilgrims are scheduled to spend July 2-5 in the Philadelphia Archdiocese, where events include a day of service July 3, and continuous Eucharistic adoration from the evening of July 2 to the afternoon of July 4 at the Cathedral Basilica.

The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage launched in 2024 ahead of that year’s National Eucharistic Congress with four routes converging in Indianapolis. It continued last year with a route through the American Southwest.

This year’s six-week route along the East Coast began May 24 in St. Augustine, Florida. In the weeks since, the pilgrims have traveled along the East Coast through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island.

The route’s perpetual pilgrims, all young adults, have accompanied the Eucharist throughout the journey, stopping for Mass, adoration and other events at parishes and religious institutions, as well as public sites and memorials, many of which have highlighted the United States’ Catholic history as the nation prepares to mark its 250th anniversary.

Pilgrimage stops in the Fall River Diocese included a June 29 procession, Mass and Eucharistic adoration in New Bedford, Massachusetts, at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a parish which serves Portuguese-speaking Catholics.

During a multilingual Mass that evening marking the solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, the parish’s pastor Father Christopher Peschel preached about the meaning of “freedom,” which he tied to the upcoming anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, marking the birthday of the United States.

“We recall a revolution that started just a few dozen miles to our north with a couple boxes of tea being tossed from a ship named Dartmouth, sailed and owned by a prominent family from here in New Bedford,” he said during the livestreamed Mass.

“We know a war broke out, revolutionary war. Battles ensued that hit close to home, even here in the old place called Bedford Village. It was completely burned to the ground by a fire so intense that they could see the flames 20 miles away in Newport, Rhode Island,” he said.

“Yet even those imperfect revolutionaries knew that their united cause was worth fighting for, worth living for, worth dying for. And in their own way, they set the world ablaze to live out a freedom and a liberty endowed by the Creator, God, such as this world had never seen before.

“God is the source of freedom. God is the source of liberty,” he said. “So it makes sense then that the Son of God, in the flesh, would bring that same freedom in the form of salvation … to all who find new life in him through baptism and who sustain that same life through frequent reception of the sacraments, particularly of reconciliation and the holy Eucharist.”

Father Peschel pointed to that day’s saints, Peter and Paul, who experienced imprisonment together in Rome, but who “used their liberty to bear witness even to the point of their own martyrdom.”

“This freedom is not some kind of freedom to be indifferent,” he said, “but a freedom for excellence, for holiness, to live for Jesus Christ.”

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