Santander, (EFE) Only then will it be opened again for pilgrims to pass, as it has been for at least 600 years.
“The pilgrimage has been reliably documented since the 15th century and since then it has been uninterrupted,” the prior of the monastery and guardian of the door, José María Lucas, told EFE, explaining that these three knocks have a symbolic value. “You don’t recognize right away that you need to be forgiven,” he says.
Cantabria hopes that the Lebaniego Jubilee Year, which is celebrated every time April 16, the Saint Toribio festivity, falls on a Sunday, will attract more than two million visitors, with an extensive program of activities that will last until April 2024 .
But behind the great concerts, the sports challenges or the attractions of gastronomy, heritage and landscapes of the 71.7 kilometers that separate San Vicente de la Barquera, where the path begins, from Santo Toribio, there is a story that, According to Christian tradition, it dates back to the 5th century, to a Jerusalem beset by the Persians.
Santo Toribio, recounts the prior, was custodian of the relics that were kept in the Holy Sepulchre, and given the difficult situation in Jerusalem, he asked Bishop Juvenal for permission to remove a piece of the horizontal arm of the cross of Christ from the holy ground.
He traveled with her to Astorga, where he was bishop and where he died, but the city was razed in 714 by the Muslims who invaded the peninsula. “The Christians of Astorga wanted to save things of value and among them they save the remains of Santo Toribio and the relic of the cross,” recalls José María Lucas.
A safe place
When the Astorganos arrived at the Lebaniego monastery in their flight, “a beautiful place with difficult access” then dedicated to San Martín de Tours, they thought it was a safe place to bury Toribio’s remains and to keep the relic, considered by the Church as the largest surviving fragment of the cross in the world.
The first news about the monastery appears in a cartulary from the year 825, although tradition says that it already existed in the 6th century, when another Toribio, a monk from Palencia, settled there with some companions. But there is nothing written about that story, the prior points out.
In the archive of the cathedral of Palencia, documents of pilgrims from the 15th century are preserved that speak of their experience on the way. “Word of mouth, the knowledge that there is a relic of the cross here makes it a place of pilgrimage,” he explains.
Pilgrims who go to Santiago de Compostela by the northern route arrive at Santo Toribio, stop at San Vicente de la Barquera, from where they follow the road to Liébana and then take the French route to Santiago.
“There are others who come from Castilla, crossing the mountains and the ports, others from Asturias and others from León”, details the Franciscan priest.
It was in 1512 when Pope Julius II, at the request of the abbot of the monastery, appointed a commission with the mission of studying whether Santo Toribio could be declared a place of permanent pilgrimage taking into account tradition, the presence of the relic of the cross and some jubilee day that seems to have been celebrated earlier.
Three years later, in 1515, his successor, Pope Leo X, agreed to the request and from that moment jubilee years began to be celebrated. That of 2023 will be number 74.
According to the prior, there have been moments of greater presence of pilgrims and others of lesser influx, especially when, with the confiscation, the monastery was left “empty and abandoned” but the relic, the Lignum Crucis, was still there. “The same then the influx was smaller but it has been continuous since the Middle Ages”, he assures.
21st century pilgrims
And in the 21st century? The guardian of the door of forgiveness uses an Arab proverb that he has made his own to explain that there are now three types of pilgrims: those who walk the path with their feet, thinking about the physical effort and the challenge of improving each day, those who pilgrims with their eyes, enjoying culture, art and landscapes, and those who do it with their hearts, with a spiritual motivation.
For them, he says, the pilgrimage “is an encounter with themselves, a moment of reconciliation, the fulfillment of a promise…”
“To us, as a Franciscan community that is in the monastery, what we have to do is offer hospitality to those who do it with their feet, with their eyes or with their hearts, offer them a welcoming space with themselves and with God,” he adds. .
The prior does not believe that the two million visitors expected by the Government of Cantabria will go through the Puerta del Perdón, but one million, a figure that was already reached in the last Holy Year, 2017.
And he is not afraid that the Jubilee Year will end the tranquility of his community, which is not dedicated to the contemplative life but to “being in the world, in contact with people.”
In fact, it is so active in its day-to-day life that among the missions of the Franciscans of Santo Toribio is to work as parish priests of the 22 rural centers that are in the vicinity of the monastery. “For us it is a good opportunity to offer what we are and what makes us live”, he affirms.