Pilgrimage will explore Dominican history

Friday, Jul. 04, 2025

SALT LAKE CITY — At the end of this Year of the Jubilee 2025, which has the theme Pilgrims of Hope, Dominican Father Gabriel Mosher is planning to lead a group to some sites in Italy that have historical importance in the life of the Order of Preachers.

“We’re an 800-year-old institution of friars and nuns that has established so many of the important things in Western civilization that we take for granted – everything from the modern legal system to the scientific method,” said Fr. Gabriel, who sees the pilgrimage as a way to draw people into the Dominican culture.

“The plan is to celebrate the jubilee and to walk in the places that the Order as a whole has walked, and to draw people that are here into that life and charism and history of the Dominicans in that part of the world,” said Fr. Gabriel, pastor of Saint Catherine of Siena Parish and Newman Center in Salt Lake City.

Among the highlights of the tour will be a stop in Florence, “Where one of our greatest priories in the history of our order was,” Fr. Gabriel said.

That priory is now part of the Convento di San Marco in Florence, which includes a church and the San Marco Museum. Among the museum’s collection are a number of frescoes by Fra Angelico, a 15th-century Dominican friar renowned for his paintings. The monastery’s refectory has a fresco of “The Last Supper” by Fra Angelico.

The priory also was home to Girolamo Savonarola, a well-known Dominican preacher. Today, the church contains the relics of Saint Antoninus, a Dominican friar who was Archbishop of Florence who had a reputation as a moral theologian.

“All these great and famous names are tied to this convent,” Fr. Gabriel said.

Another stop on the pilgrimage will be the Basilica di San Petronio in Bologna, the burial place of Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order.

The pilgrimage will also visit Montepulciano, home to Saint Agnes of Montepulciano, a medieval Dominican prioress known as a miracle worker; Ovrieto, where Saint Thomas Aquinas taught in 1263; and Siena, home to the patroness of the Salt Lake parish and Newman Center.

The crucifix in the Newman Center chapel is modeled after the cross of the stigmata of St. Catherine; the original is in Siena. Pilgrims will also have the chance to see the originals of two other reproductions that are housed in the chapel: one of Fra Angelico scenes of Calvary, and a rendering of the “Advocata Nostra.”  

To be in the presence of Fra Angelico’s “actual works that were created for the meditation of the brothers in their cells is a very powerful thing,” Fr. Gabriel said. 

The original of the “Advocata Nostra” is in the Holy Rosary monastery in Rome. It is one of the oldest known renderings of the Blessed Mother. Tradition says it was painted by Saint Luke.

“Saint Dominic carried this around during his preaching mission himself, and then entrusted it to the nuns,” Fr. Gabriel said.

While in Rome, the pilgrims will go through the Holy Doors of the basilicas and visit the Convent of Santa Sabina, which was entrusted to the Dominicans by Pope Honorius III, who approved the order in 1216.

Each of the stops except one on the pilgrimage was chosen deliberately to explore Dominican history; the exception is Ravenna, which “is just a guilty pleasure,” Fr. Gabriel said.

Ravenna was the imperial capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402 to 751, and “it has the oldest Western Christian mosaics” in addition to being “where Dante is buried and all sorts of other wonderful things … and I’ve always wanted to go,” he said.

The pilgrimage is scheduled for Dec. 15-23. For information, visit trip.nativitypilgrimage.com/mosher-2025 or call (832) 406-7050 or 1+844-400-9559;  info@nativitypilgrimage.com or trip.nativitypilgrimage.com/mosher-2025

Four other diocesan priests scheduled Jubilee Year pilgrimages. At the end of April, Fr. Tristan Dillon, parochial vicar of St. George Parish, led one to Italy. 

Fr. Joshua Santos, pastor of Saint Joseph Parish in Ogden, will lead one to the Camino de Santiago Sept. 26-Oct. 6. For information, visit  https://www.206tours.com/cms/frsantos/

Fr. Arokia Dass David, administrator of Notre Dame de Lourdes and Good Shepherd parishes in central Utah, has scheduled an Oct. 20-Nov. 1 pilgrimage to Rome, Padua, Florence, Lourdes and Fatima. For information visit https://holylandtc.wetravel.com/checkout_embed?uuid=10016804

For information about the Nov. 6-17 pilgrimage to Rome with Fr. Christopher Gray, pastor of St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Park City, visit  www.evolution35.com/ Tour 273