108.
At least that’s what my car told me the temperature was.
Well, at least it’s consistent.
After all, it was 101 in St. Augustine when the 2026 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage kicked off. And at every stop I’d covered along the way, it was either north of 90, or raining, or both.
There was Savannah. Rain-soaked, swampy Savannah. There, as the pilgrimage moved through sheets of rain and Southern humidity, the road stripped away any illusion that this was simply a beautiful Catholic event. Wet socks, soaked shirts, fogged lenses, and water running down ones back have a way of clarifying things.
Anyone can walk when the weather’s pleasant.
But it takes a pilgrim to keep walking when comfort’s left the room.
Baltimore brought the rain again. In the nation’s first Catholic diocese, with the old stones of Catholic America underfoot, the pilgrimage moved through water, prayer, history, and the particular peace that rain brings to city streets.
And in Annapolis, the procession began in rain and ended in sunset adoration beneath a rainbow which seemed like a gift, or perhaps a brief reprieve.
Rain has a way of stripping an event down to its essentials. The decorum relaxes. The
