A record 180,000 motorcyclists have their helmets blessed at Fátima shrine

A record 180,000 motorcyclists have their helmets blessed at Fátima shrine
By OSV News

FATIMA, Portugal (OSV News) -- "A true prophetic mission" can be carried out on a motorcycle, Lisbon's patriarch told 180,000 motorcyclists who gathered at the Sanctuary of Fátima Sept. 22 for their ninth pilgrimage.

Bishop Rui Manuel Sousa Valério challenged motorcyclists to "infect the world and society" with a "spiritual and humanist dimension for the development of daily life tasks," giving them "a true prophetic mission."

The patriarch asked the record number of participants to be "walkers who go to meet the Lord, radiating, along the paths, the luminous light of hope."

The pilgrimage started with the parade of a group of motorcyclists carrying a statue of Our Lady of Fátima next to the Basilica of the Holy Trinity, followed by a Mass during which the bikers’ helmets were blessed.

By ceasing to be "focused solely on the physical dimensions of speeds reached, kilometers covered, stages covered, and engine capacities," the patriarch said he believes that motorcyclists "will begin to understand and feel that what really moves and transports us is not the powerful engines with large displacement, but the Lord of Life."

Bishop Sousa Valério stressed: "It is he who moves us and it is to him that, deep within, human beings always yearn to go."

In the meeting with journalists that preceded the celebration, the patriarch also alluded to the spiritual dimension that traveling by motorcycle brings.

"The motorcyclist, on board his motorcycle," he said, "always has a goal, an objective on his horizon and, little by little, in a not very conscious way, he begins to glimpse that this is what life is like, it is a path, it is a journey, a constant pilgrimage, in which on the horizon of existence there is not so much a place, but a person."

In the context of this analogy, he also recalled that "for a motorcyclist there is no distance, and the same is true for human beings in relation to God and in relation to great values. No matter how demanding they may seem, they are never sufficiently distant."

Organized under the theme "We are shaped and guided by what we love!" by the Helmet Blessing Association, the pilgrimage was associated with with two charitable donation drives, each with its own goal: One was to purchase an adapted wheelchair for a 22-year-old motorcyclist who was left a quadriplegic due to a motorcycle accident; the other was to help the fire brigades fighting devastating fires in Portugal.

At least seven people have died and 50 have been injured as wildfires have been raging in central and northern Portugal in mid September. More than 5,000 firefighters have been mobilized to battle the blazes.

The rector of the Sanctuary of Fátima, Father Carlos Cabecinhas, also highlighted the charitable nature of the pilgrimage of the Blessing of Helmets. "This year, in the dramatic context that we have been living, it is impossible not to remember the victims of the fires, just as it is impossible not to remember the firefighters in particular."

Recognizing that "this is a great day in Fátima," the rector highlighted the festive atmosphere of the pilgrimage. "It is also a time for socializing and this is an aspect that is not secondary," he noted.