Young adults from Colorado Springs share experiences of transformative pilgrimage to Italy

By Lisa Hunt

The 2025 Jubilee Year was a year of conversion, growth and deepening of faith for the young adults at St. John Henry Newman Chapel and Catholic Student Center.  It was a reminder of our mortality and that we are pilgrims on earth who have great hope and anticipation for the coming of the kingdom. 

Throughout 2025, the students and young adults at the Newman Center celebrated the jubilee year by going on pilgrimages to our diocesan pilgrimage sites, the Mother Cabrini Shrine and holy sites in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thanks to a generous bequest from the estate of Robert Moyers, members of the community were also able to join over 3 million other pilgrims who visited the Vatican during the jubilee year.

Father Jim Williams, Director of Campus Ministry, accompanied 23 young adults to Italy from Dec. 29, 2025 through Jan. 7, 2026.  The pilgrimage included visiting holy sites in Rome, Assisi, Lanciano and San Giovanni Rotondo.  For many of the young adults this was their first experience traveling to Europe, and they were drawn into the beauty and magnitude of the churches they were experiencing for the first time. 

“I don’t think there are words for the sheer scale of the Vatican and St. John Lateran,” said Bridget Bassinger, a junior at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS). “You grow up hearing and reading about these places, and then to be there in person was so surreal. The air has this weight to it, as if all the art and light and space was worship itself.”

One of the highlights of the pilgrimage was attending the papal audience with Pope Leo XIV. As the group waited for the audience to begin, they recited morning prayer and the rosary together. Meanwhile, people from all over the world took their seats — all of them excited to be in the presence of the pope.

 “We call ourselves Catholic, meaning universal, and what I witnessed at the general audience with the pope was a perfect example,” said Sarah Misner, 22, one of the young adults on the pilgrimage. “There were people from everywhere in attendance, with announcers repeating the words of the Holy Father in different languages so that everyone was included and could understand. But, by far, my favorite part of this was when, at the end of the audience, we all sung the ‘Our Father’ in Latin. Everyone knew it, everyone understood it, and everyone was speaking to God in that moment, no matter what their main language was. Everyone was intentionally there for God with a silent excitement and understanding in our unified voices.”

One of the great gifts of pilgrimage is encountering the sacred at different holy sites. For Noelle Lopez, a first-year graduate student at UCCS, it was at the Sanctuary of St. Michael the Archangel where she most deeply experienced Christ speaking to her heart.

“To stand in the cave where St. Michael appeared was a reminder that Christ guards the heart. God sends his messengers to care for his beloved, and his archangels to defend us. In that cave, I felt a peace I had not known in a long while—I knew I was safe.” 

Ethan Parks, a senior at UCCS, said there were two holy sites that were particularly impactful for him: the Holy Stairs in Rome, which tradition states are 28 of the steps that Christ walked upon during his passion, and the site of the Eucharistic miracle in Lanciano.

“There are few things more profound than kneeling on the steps that Our Lord and Savior walked on. Reflecting on the beauty of his love was transformative in the depth of my faith! Then, to be in the presence of the Eucharist visibly transformed into physical flesh and blood strengthened and affirmed my faith. This trip has given me stronger convictions that Catholicism offers, authentically and definitively, the fullness of truth!” 

Gavin Goss, a freshman at UCCS, said that he not only experienced God in the churches but as he wandered through the towns where the saints had walked.

“This pilgrimage showed me how rich the faith, culture, architecture, and beauty of Italy truly are. While on the hillside of Assisi I got to fully experience Italian culture through amazing pizza, beautiful churches, and most importantly God. This experience made me more aware that wherever you are no matter how far or close, God is always with you.”

And yet as incredible as these holy sites are, the young adults continued to be called towards the source and summit of our faith — the Eucharist, which is found in the tabernacles of all Catholic Churches from the most simple to the most grand.

 “There was a night in San Giovanni Rotondo when we had some time to explore, so I went to the old church where the body of St. Padre Pio lay,” said Michaela Ortiz, a junior at Pikes Peak State College. “They had been praying the rosary in the crypt. After they finished the rosary, I went up into the church where the Blessed Sacrament was and I just sat there in the peace and quiet. In that moment an extraordinary amount of peace came upon me — a peace that I hadn’t felt since arriving in Italy.”

The pilgrimage was an incredible and tangible experience of God’s grandeur, but just like the jubilee year, its purpose was to point us toward a deepening relationship with God and the Church. It served as a reminder that God wants us to continue seeking his love, his guidance and his will as we travel on this pilgrimage of life.

(Lisa Hunt is Campus Minister at St. John Henry Newman Chapel and Catholic Student Center. For more information, visit newmancos.org.)