Pilgrim George: A Journey of Faith

Editor's note: This is the first part of a three-day series chronicling Pilgrim George Walter on his recent 1,350-mile journey on foot from his home in Hampton to Chicago and back.

The sun shines brightly behind tall pines near St. Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church in Hampton. It creates a heavenly glow around the treetops and casts a man's shadow toward the church on this early September evening.

A 63-year-old man with a long, gray beard wearily walks up the driveway to the church, knowing that his home has been destroyed.

He reaches the entrance of the church, stops and prays aloud, finishing with the Hail Mary. At his feet is an engraved brick that reads, "Memory of Pilgrim George Walter."

The man continues onward, past the church, before turning and stopping again. He stands only a few feet from what used to be his home. The two-story building where he occupied a small basement room has been reduced to slabs of concrete and twisted iron rods.

The man's thick, tan-framed glasses reflect a glare from the fading sunset. For long periods, he doesn't say a word.

It's Labor Day, and George Walter has walked about 1,350 miles -- more than three million steps -- from Pittsburgh to Chicago and back during the past 134 days. Since 1970, he has made what he believes to be 25 or 26 pilgrimages by foot, spanning more than 30,000 miles and 40 countries, including a 13-year trek across the United States, Asia and Europe from 1988 to 2001.

His extraordinary expeditions are met with muted homecomings, particularly tonight.

No balloons. No banners. No confetti. No home.

George, a Hampton Township native, was told weeks ago by a friend that his home inside St. Mary's old rectory was being razed.

Now he stands looking at the site of his former home and still is unsure where he will sleep this night.

"A pilgrim is at home everywhere," he says, "and nowhere is his home."

Undaunted, George grabs one of his three traveling bags, gingerly walks down a steep hill behind the church and begins setting up a tent that served as his home during much of the past five months.

"My home is in heaven," he says. "I'm just passing through. I don't have a home on Earth. But I'm not homeless."

He lives a hermit-like existence during the colder seven months of the year, planning his next pilgrimage in the name of Jesus, and fulfilling what he believes is his obligation to God in the spring and summer months.

He owns almost nothing except the clothes he wears -- a denim-patched robe and tire-soled sandals that serve as his hallmark -- and three sacks that he carries. He has no money except the little that people give him, and he doesn't want any. He lives off the generosity of strangers he meets along the way.

He has survived this way for three decades.

In a cynical, skeptical world, George survives this radical lifestyle and serves as a beacon of hope for many who discover him along the shoulders of roads. He leaves footprints not only on the land that he traverses but also on the hearts that he touches.

A small brotherhood

In a society that has increasingly shunned religion, George goes great distances to profess his faith.

To his knowledge, he is one of only eight lifetime pilgrims who exist.

One, Carl Joseph, lives in eastern Pennsylvania near Hazelton. He wears a long, white robe and walks barefoot. He carries no staff and no baggage and does not accept money. The 40-something-year-old has become known as "Whatsyourname," as he commonly answers the question of "Who are you?" with "What's your name?" He has walked through all but one of the contiguous United States -- omitting Montana -- and more than a dozen countries. He often is stopped because, George says, "People think he's Jesus."

Joseph, originally from Ohio, has remained in the Hazelton area for much of the past five years. George says that Joseph has gained such popularity that he's been invited to appear on television and radio.

"He's very good in bringing people back to the Catholic faith," says George, who met Joseph last year. "Hundreds and thousands stop and listen to him."

Asked why he does not seek such attention, George says, "That's not my calling. My calling is to walk and to pray."

Another pilgrim, the Rev. Arcadius Smolinski, an 83-year-old Franciscan priest, left the United States in 1974 and walked mostly around Europe. He stops for months at a time at chapels, churches and shrines to pray and hear confessions. A member of the Assumption Province in Franklin, Wis., Smolinski wears a brown Franciscan habit, or hooded robe, and returns to the United States periodically. He receives permission from the Assumption Province every three years to continue his work as a pilgrim. He continues to walk, but his whereabouts today are unknown.

A third pilgrim, Francis of the Heart of Mary, originally from Oregon, walked through all of the contiguous United States during a 10-year pilgrimage. During his journeys, he wore a robe made of patches of Army blankets and, like George, sandals with soles made from automobile tires. The two met in 2000 in Jerusalem, but George says their ideas for tire-soled sandals were conceived independently.

Francis now spends his time in Jacksonville, Fla., George says, and is writing a prayer book for Catholics.

His body broken, Francis' pilgrimages are over.

"He wrote me this summer," George says, "and said he can't walk anymore."

Paul Rohde, originally from Florida and now living in Evanston, Ill., became a lifetime pilgrim about five years ago. He usually charts his path by churches at which he can rest along the way. But the 34-year-old's status is in limbo. Rohde, who lives at the Mennonite-based Reba Place Fellowship, opted not to take a pilgrimage this summer, George says, because he recently began a relationship and did not want to leave his girlfriend.

Three other lifetime pilgrims, George says, live in South America, Ireland and Poland.

George, who is known to friends as Pilgrim George, says he will continue to walk until he is physically unable. He knows little else.

Not quite a priest

George became a pilgrim more than 35 years ago when, as an ordained deacon prepared to enter the priesthood, he turned his back on his religious orders.

He says he's a product of a time during which the priesthood underwent an identity crisis. Questions arose surrounding the roles of priests -- whether they should be considered counselors, social workers or teachers. It confused many seminarians, including George. He claims the Catholic Church never fully recovered, causing, in part, in the shortage of priests.

According to a study by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the number of diocesan and religious priests increased only slightly since 1950 while the number of Catholics more than doubled.

Diocesan priests serve people of a diocese and work in parishes and schools as assigned by their bishops. Religious priests belong to a religious order such as Dominicans or Franciscans, usually teach or serve as missionaries and take a vow of poverty.

By next year, the bishops' organization projects that the Diocese of Pittsburgh will have lost one-quarter of the diocesan priests it had in 1966. The diocese has lost almost 40 percent of all its priests -- diocesan, religious order, sick or retired -- since 1976, according to the group's figures.

The decline of priests in the Diocese of Greensburg hasn't been as sharp, but the number of parishes in the diocese without a resident priest increased six-fold between 1991 and 2001.

Anthony Bosco, former bishop of the Greensburg diocese and a good friend of George, says he doesn't necessarily see a correlation between the priesthood's identity crisis of the 1960s and today's priest shortage.

"I don't think the shortage of priests has anything to do with anything but the society in which we live," Bosco says. "There have been scandals in the church. People aren't as religious as they used to be. We're more materialistic today.

"We're living in a (country) where God isn't as important, where parents don't encourage their sons to enter the priesthood. There are parts of the world, in Asia, they can't build seminaries fast enough. Here, we're in sort of a religious bewilderment."

Familiar first steps

As the 7 a.m. Monday Mass on April 26 adjourns and people begin exiting their pews, George lags behind.

His bags await him in the foyer of Saint Mary of the Assumption, but George wants to ask the Rev. John Marcucci for a blessing before leaving on his pilgrimage to a ministry in Chicago, then north to a religious shrine in Libertyville, Ill.

Marcucci, who four years ago granted George his small, secluded room in the old rectory's basement, obliges and offers a short prayer.

George then straps on his sandals, collects his three denim-patched satchels that match his long robe, reaches for his smooth, bowed, wooden walking staff with the San Damiano crucifix and tiny bells at the top and heads for the door.

These items have been symbols of George for more than a decade, some even longer. His appearance hasn't changed much, either, since he began making pilgrimages in 1970.

His beard was not always so long or gray, but he has had it since 1968. In 1988 he stopped trimming his beard, allowing it to grow to the middle of his torso. He explains the symbolism of a long beard with a story of Sampson from the Old Testament.

"It's a sign you're given over to the Lord in a complete way," George says.

He effortlessly relates matters of today's society and his own habits to biblical stories. Yet, in the next breath, he is capable of disarming on-lookers with a unique sense of humor and simplicity. When asked why he doesn't shave, he says with a wink and smile, "So I don't have to carry a razor."

When he did groom his beard, he handled the duties himself, just like he does with his hair. He has never been to a barber. Ever. His father cut his hair when he was a child, and now George uses an electric razor twice a year -- before he leaves on a pilgrimage and after he returns -- to trim what's left of his hair.

He began wearing his denim-patched robe in 1988, when, he says, the he heard the Lord speak to him and instruct as much. A seamstress friend sewed together old patches of blue jeans for him. Since then, George periodically replaces sections that wear out or tear. He generally replaces every patch of his robe every two or three years. Not that he can differentiate between the colors of the patches. George was born color-blind. He can see some color, but not shades.

The idea of tire-treaded sandals struck George while he was walking through the North Hills in the early 1980s. He happened across an old tire and thought it would make a good sandal. He designed several versions of that original sandal before settling in 1992 on this -- sandals made entirely of tire treads, save the thick, nylon straps bolted to the sole. He simply slides his feet into them and buckles the straps. The sandals weigh about 5 pounds each and have lasted 20,000 miles so far. He replaces the heels every 1,500 miles, or before a new pilgrimage.

He carries only his staff and three bags: one for food and water, one for his tent and one for miscellaneous items such as toiletries. A smaller denim-patched sack holds his Bible inside the miscellaneous bag.

He doesn't own much more. He wears a watch, the extent of his electronics possessions. He does not have, watch or listen to a television or radio, and he does not want them. Instead, he reads his Bible cover to cover every year.

However, George does use e-mail, mostly in the winter, to keep in contact with the hundreds of friends he has made around the world. He typically sends 400 e-mails, using a computer in Saint Mary's School, and 200 hand-written letters to friends every winter.

When not traveling, George fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays, eating just bread and water. He chose Wednesdays because that was the day the apostle Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus and Fridays because that was the day Jesus died. When he eats, he often rummages through leftovers in the rectory refrigerator, with the pastor's permission.

When he leaves on a pilgrimage, George packs one or two days' worth of food and water. He relies on God's providence for the remainder of his trips -- help that usually comes in the form of strangers bearing bottled water, slices of pizza and hamburgers.

During pilgrimages, George sleeps in a 7-foot-long-by-4-foot-wide tent that he pitches in the woods, under highway overpasses, in cornfields, in any location that appears discrete and where he will not be bothered. He retires for the day at about 9 p.m. -- after he covers about 15 miles -- and awakens usually by 4:30 a.m. He prays for hours before he resumes walking at about 7:30 a.m. When he is not using it to pray, George's Bible serves as his pillow.

He carries a bar of soap, a toothbrush and cinnamon tooth polish. When he finishes scrubbing his teeth, he swallows the toothpaste. He uses soap to wash his body and hair. He usually bathes in creeks or streams and does not wear deodorant.

It's not uncommon for strangers to find him when he's bathing. Once, George was urinating in bushes before he was to bathe when three women -- a mother, her teenage daughter and the daughter's friend -- yelled down from atop a small hill.

"Are we bothering you?" the mother shouted. "Do you mind if we come down to talk to you?"

George composed himself before welcoming them. His bath would have to wait.

Another time, a man stood and waited for George to finish bathing before striking up a conversation.

When possible, George finds a secluded area in which to relieve himself. But he also carries a bottle inside a sealable, clear bag that he urinates in if necessary. He was diagnosed with an enlarged prostate in the early 1990s and has had to remain prepared in an emergency. If need be, he uses his robe to shield himself while urinating. He also keeps the bottle with him inside the tent at night.

George spends hours each day singing psalms and reciting prayers. In the winter, he plays a flute and harp after waking at 4:30 a.m. When walking, he says the Prayer of Saint Patrick at least once each day to protect him from harm. He can recite the Hail Mary in 19 languages and is hoping to learn it in Nigerian this winter. That would enable him to recite each of the 20 mysteries of the rosary in a different language.

He never looks back

No psalms are necessary on this dreary Monday morning of April 26.

Foreshadowing events to come in the next five months, George is accompanied down the Saint Mary driveway by a small group of parishioners and friends. Ominous clouds linger overhead. It looks like rain.

One by one, people wish George well and splinter off, eventually leaving him alone with Ray and Joanne Stein, friends of his since 1978.

Moments later, Joanne fights back tears, hugs George and says good-bye. Ray continues on a short bit with George, and the two reminisce about how the neighborhood has changed during the past 20 years.

"People are polarized by someone like George," Ray says later. "You either like him or don't like him. People look at him, and he's different. Some people don't like him because he's different. Some people understand him and like him a lot.

"We don't really part ways. It's hard to explain. He's just off doing the thing that he does."

Ray walks a little longer with George, embraces his good friend and bids him farewell.

George turns and takes his next step. Then another. And another. He heads down the windy road and never looks back.

A pilgrim in the making

George sits on a cement block wall outside an entrance to Saint Mary of the Assumption. Across a driveway, only 30 feet away but in Indiana Township, sits Saint Mary's School.

Relentless sunshine beats down this April afternoon. After a bitterly cold winter, temperatures have climbed into the 70s for the first time in months.

Minutes earlier, dozens of children in grades kindergarten through eight were racing around the parking lot in their navy skirts and uniforms. Now all is quiet, save for an occasional car passing along the driveway between the buildings.

George is wearing beach sandals and his trademark denim-patched robe. A purple baseball cap with a Diocese of Pittsburgh logo hides a mostly bald head.

He is clutching rosary beads and a prayer rope with knots with which he recites the Chotki, or The Jesus Prayer. His right arm clutches his Bible, protecting it dearly.

George sits with his back to the sunlight but turns when a young girl carrying a sack emerges from the church with her father. George smiles. The girl, though she had seen George before, cowers to her father's side. George is not discouraged.

"You look like you're ready for a pilgrimage," he says enthusiastically with a smile.

The girl says nothing. The girl's father offers a cordial salutation, then leads his daughter away.

So much has changed for George since he returned to St. Mary in 2001 after his 13-year pilgrimage around the world. Yet he says he feels as at home as ever.

Born July 25, 1941, he grew up the oldest of Florian and Mary Rita Walter's three sons. He is two years older than his brother Paul, who lives in State College and recently suffered a stroke. He was unable to contribute to this story. And George is eight years older than brother Tom, who lives in Voorheesville, N.Y., near Albany.

The Walter family lived in a two-story house on Harts Run Road in Hampton, not far down Middle Road from Saint Mary. Florian, a jack-of-all-trades electrician, built the house. George and Paul shared a room as children, sleeping in bunk beds. When Tom was born, Florian built an addition onto the house.

The boys engaged in typical childhood endeavors. All three became involved in scouting, with their father serving as a scout master.

George and Tom, now 55, a father of two 20-somethings and husband to Christine, described their father as a man who "could fix anything." Florian often volunteered his time and talent at Saint Mary.

Mary Rita Walter was a housewife despite earning a practical nursing license years before. It was only years later, when Tom started high school -- long after George had left home -- that she began working as a floor nurse at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.

The Walters were a religious family. They attended Mass every Sunday. They participated in and volunteered for church activities.

The three Walter boys attended Saint Mary's School -- all three serving as altar boys. But George Walter took an especially strong interest in his faith. It was at Saint Mary's School that religion took hold of his imagination and curiosity. He began attending Mass every day.

By the time he reached eighth grade, the highest at the school, George developed a real interest in pursuing a career as a priest. So, at age 14, he decided to leave home to attend minor seminary, or a seminary high school, relatively common in the 1950s, at Saint Gregory Seminary High School in Cincinnati.

Six years later, after completing high school and two years of seminary college at Saint Gregory, he enrolled in major seminary, or seminary college, at Mount Saint Mary Seminary High School and College in Norwood, Ohio. There, he finished the remaining two years of college before moving on to Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, where he studied theology.

Tom doesn't remember much about George as a child. He was just 6 years old when George left for Saint Gregory. But he remembers the great sense of pride he and his family felt about having a family member enrolled in seminary high school.

"In those days, it was a big thing to have someone in the family in the seminary," Tom says. "That was the biggest calling there was."

Tom grew to know his oldest brother mostly through George's visits home during Christmas, Easter and the summer. The Walters regularly made day trips in the summer to a reservoir north of Butler. Every Sunday, they would attend the early Mass, then haul a trailer and boat to a campsite before returning home by nightfall.

They are some of Tom's fondest memories of George.

But members of the Walter family, including George's mother and father, who died in the late 1990s, had a difficult time understanding George's desire to become a pilgrim. Some became aggravated with George, others downright angry and hostile.

"I think my parents had quite a hard time with it," Tom says. "We were all convinced he would be dead before very long, that someone would run over him or attack him or something.

"I'm sure if you or I tried what he does, we wouldn't get very far. He just seems to be in the grace of God."

Rose Stegman of O'Hara, who works at Saint Mary of the Assumption as the director of religious education, has known George for more than 30 years. She also knew his parents and saw the emotional toll that George's calling took on them.

"(His mother) shared with me that she did not understand what George was about when he came out of the seminary and began living as a hermit," Stegman says. "It was only after several years that she came to some peace with him living his life the way he is."

George was on his 13-year pilgrimage around the world when his parents died. He was in Norway when his father passed in 1997. Two years later, when his mother died, he was in Ukraine.

He never returned to see them in their final years. He never attended their funerals.

"Jesus said if you leave your father, mother, brother, sister, wife, children and lands for my sake, you will have 100 fold, and I do," George says. "I have mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters all over the world, people who take me into their home. I'm a total stranger. They say, 'Come in. Our house is your house.' "

With a staff in one hand and a Bible in another, George walks on, never apologizing for his actions, never looking back.

The calm after the storm

John Zugonics speaks with the same disdain for his job, the monotony of his tasks, the incompetence of his bosses, that many 53-year-old Americans do.

With his next breath, his voice glows with adoration for his family, in particular his oldest daughter, Nancy, who is to marry in three days.

He is quick to admit that he has reached a point in life where he questions his actions, his beliefs, his role in this world.

On this cloudless Wednesday in late April outside Beaver Falls, Zugonics agrees to an early breakfast at the Hot Dog Shop in New Brighton with his wife, Alice. Then he will trudge to his chore as a facility manager at Amerinet Central, a company that supports health-care providers, in Cranberry.

Because he ate breakfast out, Zugonics must take a different route to work than he normally does. As he leaves the Hot Dog Shop in his Chevrolet S-10 pickup, his attention is diverted by a denim-robed man with a staff walking along the road.

George has just endured what would be one of the most trying days and nights of his 134-day, 1,350-mile journey to Chicago, and it struck just two days into his trek.

George typically calls it a day near nightfall. But by 6 p.m. on this Tuesday, he has endured enough. An unseasonably cold weather front blew through western Pennsylvania, bombarding the region with constant rain and occasional snow and hail.

Temperatures drop overnight. Inside his tent, George wraps himself in his sleeping bag, then drapes a lightweight yet warm space blanket, made with materials developed by NASA, over himself.

The cold startles him out of sleep several times overnight. By the time George wakes for good the next morning, his thermometer reads 30 degrees.

But the sun is slowly emerging, a new day dawning, and another 15 miles await. George packs his belongings in his sacks and starts on his way, mostly through moderately traveled, heavily wooded back roads, toward Bernie and Mary Sonnett's home in North Sewickley Township in Beaver County.

The Sonnetts met George in the late 1970s at a teen ministry in McKees Rocks named Children of Yahweh. Today, the ministry is gone, replaced by a pizza shop.

George and the Sonnetts worked together, along with the Rev. Gus Milon, whom George plans to visit in Chicago, for years before Milon left for Chicago and George left in 1988 to walk around the world.

By 8:30 a.m., George has walked for more than an hour when Zugonics parts ways with his wife and discovers this loner. His curiosity forces him to stop.

He begins chatting up George, inquiring who he is, where he is going. Zugonics is so fascinated that he parks his truck and begins walking with him.

After a half-mile, Zugonics retreats to his truck and is off to work. Only he never makes it. He just cannot erase George from his thoughts.

He phones work, tells his boss he is not coming in and reverses direction in search of George. Zugonics, who carries a Bible in a small, black case, is a religion buff and determined to learn more about George, even if that means walking for hours in blue dress pants, a powder-blue designer golf shirt and dress shoes.

After finding George and walking with him for a short while, Zugonics buys him lunch at Stonewall Country Restaurant and Deli. Both order roast beef sandwiches and enjoy apple pie for dessert.

Five hours later, with almost 10 miles under his belt, Zugonics parts ways with George at the top of a driveway adjacent to the Sonnetts' house on Shaffer Road. Mary Sonnett welcomes her old friend into the red, two-story home. Bernie Sonnett, having just arrived home from work, agrees to drive Zugonics to a soft-serve ice cream shop, where his wife will pick him up.

Aluminum bats ping as they connect with baseballs in nearby batting cages as Zugonics reflects on his encounter with George.

"The way he looked, the staff with Jesus Christ on the crucifix, that's what really drew me," says Zugonics, a practicing Methodist and one-time Catholic. "Something inside me at least wanted to know his name.

"Several things he said are going to stick with me. It's not so much what you do on a day-to-day basis. It's what your intention is."

Back at the Sonnetts', George sits at the dining room table. He is still wearing his jean-patched robe. He sips from a clear glass of ice water while renewing acquaintances with Bernie, Mary and one of their three children, 14-year-old son, Jordan, who is straddling a bar stool.

The hands of the clock on the kitchen wall creep past 5:30 p.m. George estimated that he would arrive at the Sonnetts' by 5 p.m. He was about five minutes early.

Mary Sonnett prepares a salad in a large plastic bowl, while Bernie begins brewing coffee. Mary's boss, Christian bookstore owner Dave Lichius, is expected any minute. Lichius will eat dinner with George and the Sonnetts before heading off with George in the morning. Like his time with Zugonics, George welcomes the opportunity to meet Lichius and make a friend.

He takes another drink of water and sets down the glass. Empty. It has been a trying start to his lengthy voyage, but he has found comfort at the Sonnetts'. He is barefoot and tired, yet his spirit is rejuvenated.