Legend has it that the remains of the Apostle James (Jacobo in Spanish) are interred in the cathedral of the city of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwest Spain. The name Santiago is an evolved form of San Iago, or Saint Jacob. The cathedral is the third most important pilgrimage site of the Catholic Church after Jerusalem and Rome. Every year and throughout the year, pilgrims arrive at the cathedral from all over the world. The Way of St. James is a network of pilgrimage routes that start from deep in Eastern Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago

James is the patron saint of Spain, and his day is July 25th. The year in which that day falls on a Sunday, the whole year is declared a Holy Jacobean Year, and the events and celebrations associated with it are collectively called the Xacobeo (in the Galician language). Last year was to be the year of the Xacobeo, but due to the pandemic, the Pope has decreed the extension of the Holy Year 2021 throughout the year 2022. Holy Years are rare and happen in a cycle of every 6, 5, 6, and 11 years; the last one was 2010. For this year, July 25th falls on a Monday, however Sunday the 24th will be the climax of the Xacobeo, and so many more pilgrims than normal years will all converge in Santiago de Compostela during the week leading up to that Sunday.

We are proposing to distribute Bibles during the week of July 21st-24th. Because there will be pilgrims from many parts of the world we could consider having representation of all the seven (7) languages for which we have the NT RcV: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Polish and Russian. It is a unique opportunity to encounter people from many countries in one place for a Christian purpose.

Possible setups for distribution are as follows:

• Option 1: Every language that participates is at each station . Each language can decide how many tables it wants to set up and how many members for each table to send.
• Option 2: A combination of languages. We will have multiple tables for Spanish and Portuguese. Languages that are not expecting too many pilgrims can join one of the other languages that have their own tables.

The option will be decided based upon the number of tables that the council allows us to set up.

The month of July 2010, the last year of the Xacobeo, would be the best indication of what we may expect this July. The distribution of registered pilgrims according to the Office of Pilgrims is as follows (“Resto” includes Russian pilgrims):

Please bear in mind that we understand many pilgrims don’t bother to register so there may be considerably more than what the official stats show.

On the basis of the above statistics and using Option 2 for setup, we could have the following tables: Our intention is to have all of the tables within sight of each other:

• 3 for Spanish
• 1 or 2 for Portuguese
• 1 or 2 for German
• 1 or 2 for French
• 1 or 2 for English
• 1 for Polish

The statistics shows a few hundred Russian pilgrims participated during the entire year 2010, however it would still be good that Russian be represented.

Russian could join any one of the languages or if they prefer to have a table, that will be fine too. There can also be stations of two languages each, say English and German, and/or English and French to take advantage of bilingual saints thus reducing the total number of saints.

For practicality of lodging and transport, we would like to limit to 30 participants maximum, including inviting some Italian saints as Italian was the second largest language group in July 2010.