STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. — It was day 12 of a 40-day walking pilgrimage on a Friday afternoon when Rhode Island Catholic caught up with the backpack-laden pilgrim, Glenn Dupont. By his estimation, he had already walked 100 miles by that point and took a day of much-needed rest in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, less than halfway through his journey.
“So far it’s been good, the Lord’s blessed me in a lot of different ways,” Dupont remarked.
He took to the streets on August 19 with meager savings and a calling from God and Our Lady to “pray for peace in our country, for the Church and the world” and to witness to the Fatima message. His trip started in Providence and will end in Washington, D.C., at the second annual Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage, taking place September 28.
Not every pilgrim who participates in this event chooses to walk to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception from their homes, but Dupont felt called to do so for the second year in a row. It’s not the proverbial journey of a thousand miles – more like 700 to 750, of which Dupont expects to walk around 500. Instead, it has been a series of moving and deeply personal experiences, and an opportunity to rely on God’s grace as well as the generosity of others.
Dupont shared stories of the numerous blessings he has received just in the fortnight since his pilgrimage began. There was the Sikh woman who drove Dupont to his hotel one night… Antonio, the pizzeria owner who fed him and found him a place to stay overnight… the Franciscan friars who could not shelter him for the night but generously paid for a hotel room… the ladies at St. Peter Church in Danbury, Connecticut, who prayed the rosary with him and gave him $15 for food… The tales go on and on.
“Literally, every day, someone was putting me up in a hotel,” he said.
When he set out, he took little money and no set-in-stone plans of where he would stay overnight or how far he could go in a day. Some days, his plans have changed dramatically, such as when he missed his ferry, and an Episcopalian woman kindly gave him a ride to make up some lost time. Whatever comes his way, Dupont has vowed to trust God to provide, even when overnight plans may fall through, or roads may be hard or dangerous to traverse.
“I plan, but there’s always things that don’t work out. And still God comes through,” he said.
Along with providing for his physical needs, God has provided for his spiritual ones, as well, giving him “numerous opportunities to put Him first” through daily Mass and prayers.
“And every single time I have, God has blessed me in noticeable ways,” he concluded in awe.
The trip has not been easy, but his motivation is simple.
“The reason I’m doing it is I am grateful to Our Lady” for her intercession years ago. Though he had been quite devout in his youth, Dupont fell away from the faith in his late teens and twenties. “I pursued worldly things for a while, made a lot of mistakes, eventually by the grace of God and my mom’s relentless prayers, like St. Monica, I was led back” at the age of 33. That was nearly 10 years ago.
Prior to his “profound reversion experience” – and again before the pandemic – Dupont experienced dark periods in his life.
“I struggled horribly with social anxiety and depression to the point I was a recluse, I wouldn’t go out of my house. I didn’t have any friends … I was a broken soul, didn’t have much hope for my life.”
Upon returning to the Catholic Church, he consecrated himself to Jesus through Mary on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and rediscovered a deep spiritual life.
He got involved in a young adult group at St. Pius V in Providence, where he was encouraged to become a lay Dominican in 2016. The following year he served as a Marian Missionary of Divine Mercy. The time Dupont spent with them prepared him for pilgrimage.
“I see these pilgrimages as more than just an opportunity to pray and offer up my sufferings … it’s an opportunity to be a missionary with the people I’m encountering in my travels,” he said.
This is his greatest joy for the 40 days of his journey – speaking to others about God and praying with them.
This was not the first walking pilgrimage he undertook. That took place in 2020. He stated that, when Catholics all over the country were away from the sacraments, “I was in a funk, and then I got an inspiration to walk the Camino [de Santiago in Spain].”
This inspiration came from an EWTN documentary on St. James the Greater, who, he discovered, had also experienced discouragement and depression before Mary appeared to him in Spain.
To prepare for this, he and two friends walked the 13 miles from Lincoln to the Shrine of the Little Flower in Burrillville. Two years later, he made a much longer trip from the shrine to the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
“I called that pilgrimage ‘the Little Way of Mercy.’”
The significance of the shrine remains with him, and he specifically felt called to route this pilgrimage through Stockbridge, though it may be more circuitous.
Dupont eventually completed the Way of St. James on the vigil of the saint’s feast day in 2022, taking 31 days to walk 500 miles on the Camino Frances.
He carries with him the numerous prayer requests of friends, family members and even those he meets along the route alongside his rosary on the streets and byways of New England.
As a lay Dominican, prayer, especially the rosary, plays a vital role in his vocation and his current pilgrimage. Dupont admitted that: “I’m by no means an expert on the rosary, I don’t think I do it particularly well. … To actually meditate and not just recite the prayers is a struggle, it’s hard.”
Sometimes the people who stop to offer him a ride take note of his rosary. That sacramental and his current undertaking provide opportunities to talk about the faith with those who provide transportation or lodging.
In fact, even his return trip from Washington, D.C., has already been taken care of by two men he became friends with while on pilgrimage to the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis in July: Tom Kaluza and Garett Quillen. Dupont learned that the two friends would be attending the rosary pilgrimage and offered him a ride back home with them.
“This isn’t about me and bragging rights about how far I walk. This is ultimately, what’s more important is the witness of it, the public witness of it.”
