Walsingham pilgrims visit Our Lady of Grace in Ipswich

A group of people from Walsingham made a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Grace in Ipswich on July 6, reciprocating a pilgrimage made from Ipswich to Walsingham in 2023. Fr Michael Rear reports.

Medieval pilgrims walking to Walsingham from the south of England frequently visited shrines en route, and among the most popular of these was Our Lady of Grace in Ipswich. In 2023 on the Feast of S. Maria Goretti a group of pilgrims from Ipswich came to Walsingham, and this year it was reciprocated.

Both Shrines were destroyed of course on the orders of Henry VIII, but happily both have been restored. Walsingham was restored (first in King’s Lynn in 1897) and Ipswich in 1990 when Ipswich Council unveiled a bas-relief of Our Lady of Grace on a commercial building which stands on the site of the original Shrine in Lady Lane. In 2002 the Shrine was restored and blessed by Anglican and Catholic bishops along with Orthodox and Methodist clergy inside the medieval Church of St Mary Elms, which is the nearest church to Lady Lane.

But is it true that Our Lady of Ipswich was destroyed? There is evidence that the image of Our Lady of Grace escaped destruction, saved by devout sailors and taken to Italy where it was off-loaded at Nettuno, a lovely little port south west of Rome. Here it was enshrined in the seaside chapel of the Annunciation. Here Maria Goretti used to pray before her, and made her First Holy Communion. And there Our Lady of Grace remained until Maria was canonised, and Pope St Paul VI asked that the small chapel should be replaced, as it was in 1969, by a beautiful new Sanctuary where Our Lady of Grace is enthroned above the high altar, and S. Maria Goretti rests in the crypt.

The Walsingham pilgrims first went to Mass at St Pancras where Fr Joseph welcomed them and preached a fine homily, before leading us into the Chapel where a beautiful new statue of Our Lady of Grace was blessed by our bishop this year. Here we said the Prayer for the Conversion of England and sang a Salve. The kind people of St Pancras provided a lovely lunch which set us up for the ‘Wolsey Walk’.

This was a walk Wolsey himself planned to make from the College he built in Ipswich to the Shrine in Lady Lane. It was rehearsed the day before, on September 7th, but atrocious weather prevented it, and two years later Wolsey died on the way from York to face a charge of treason, having failed to obtain a divorce for the King from Katherine of Aragon. (Henry suspected he had worked against him). However, in memory of Ipswich’s most famous son the Walk was revived in 1978, 450 years to the day of the rehearsal.

Stopping to pray the rosary outside St Peter’s church where he worshipped, the statue of Wolsey in Silent Street, the Church of St Nicholas in which he was baptised, and at the Town Hall Steps where a council workman stopped with us and thanked us for the witness we gave; and then in Lady Lane, before finally reaching St Mary Elms. Here the kind parishioners fed us with yet more delicious food, before the vicar, Fr John led us in devotions at the Shrine, and we made our farewells.

Will there be another similar Pilgrimage? Several people expressed an interest in going to Rome next year for the Holy Year and on the short and attractive train journey to Nettuno.

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