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The eight Catholic young adults accompanying Our Lord in this year’s National Eucharistic Pilgrimage from Indiana to Los Angeles shared their experiences of the journey so far in a press conference May 28.
The pilgrimage began on May 18 in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, and so far has stopped at various locations in Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas. Throughout their journey, they will bring the Eucharistic Lord to prisons, retirement homes, churches, and food banks. The pilgrims will arrive in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on June 20, with the pilgrimage culminating in the June 22 celebration of Corpus Christi Sunday.
At the press conference, Director of Pilgrimages Maria Benes said that as a conservative estimate, at least 7,000 different participants have come to different events, both public and private, during the first week of the procession.
After Benes’s introduction, several pilgrims spoke about their experiences on the pilgrimage.
Arthur (“Ace”) Acuña, who works at Princeton University’s Catholic student ministry, spoke about how bringing the Eucharistic Lord to the memory care unit at a retirement home helped sustain him through the pilgrimage’s challenges.
Acuña explained that visiting the patients was a very different experience than greeting parishioners at the other stops on the pilgrimage.
“Up until that point it was really easy to be present to the person right in front of us,” he said. “But in this case it was almost impossible to even get the person in front of you to even look at you.”
His perspective on the visit changed, though, when he overheard a nurse interacting with her patients.
“Even though they wouldn’t respond to her verbally, she would constantly reassure them with the words, ‘you know I love you,’” he said. It reminded him of Peter’s three responses to Jesus after the Resurrection, where he assures the Lord, “you know I love you.”
Acuña added that his own grandfather suffers from Alzheimer’s, and his family still prays the rosary with him.
“That kind of changed that whole encounter with the elderly at the retirement home, knowing that you could still love Jesus in the person right in front of you, even though it might look a little different,” he said. “And so that was just a beautiful moment of seeing the Eucharistic Lord in people, in that incarnate way.”
Cheyenne Johnson, a pilgrim who serves as the Director of Catholic Campus Ministry at Butler University in Indiana, spoke about how the first big procession in the diocese of Peoria, Illinois, inspired her. She noted that there were an estimated 700 people present, including first communicants, priests, and seminarians.
“To just see the faithful gathered like that blew me away,” Johnson said. “Then during the procession, I was able to talk to different people and I really just got to see the faithfulness of the community there. That was something really beautiful to me.”
The pilgrimage has had other meaningful moments for Catholics living along the route as well. Benes shared the story of a veterinarian who had wanted to attend the National Eucharistic Congress last year with his family, but was unable to do so because of a family emergency. However, earlier in 2025, his diocese called him and asked if one of this year’s processions could conclude outside of his business.
“He was moved to tears,” Benes said. “He couldn’t go to visit our Lord at the Congress last year, but now our Eucharistic Lord came to him physically in the Eucharist at his place of business, and he and his family were so honored.”
