Pilgrims and Pilgrimages: Fatima, Santiago De Compostela and Taize

This article explores pilgrimage as a phenomenon of contemporary religious rituality. Paradoxically, pilgrimages have contributed to the reinforcement of traditional churches and the reproduction of their members' practices on the one hand, and, on the other, to the expression of individual and privatised religiosity, close to the new conceptual perspectives on spirituality. The article analyzes three cases, namely Catholic central destiny places for pilgrims, such as Fatima, Santiago de Compostela and Taize. The data consist of documental and statistical research as well as pre-existing surveys. The article argues that there are different levels of Catholic socio-religious differentiation in each place of pilgrimage, where Fatima comes at the top and Taize at the bottom, with Santiago in the middle. There seems to be a relation between dominant types of pilgrims and the level of religious institutionalization of each Catholic place. The aim of the article is to give a theoretical contribution to the analysis of contemporary pilgrimages.