GALLERY: Crowds line the streets for St Helier pilgrimage

  • Saint Helier remembered at annual pilgrimage
  • See our gallery of pictures below
  • Around 60 pilgrims made the walk
  • Who was St Helier? Find out more below

THE monk who gave his name to the parish of St Helier was honoured and remembered at the weekend with the annual pilgrimage to Elizabeth Castle.

Around 60 pilgrims made the walk from the Town Church to the castle, where Saint Helier is believed to have lived, on Sunday.

The pilgrimage was part of a weekend of street parties and food festivals to honour the monk.

The short service, which is held on the closest Sunday to the Fête de St Helier on 16 July, was led by the Dean, the Very Rev Bob Key before St Helier Constable Simon Crowcroft laid a wreath at the Hermitage rock on the Castle’s grounds.

Mr Crowcroft said: ‘For the first time, the procession was able to move through the Fête de St Helier with people lining the street which made it quite memorable – it was the perfect synergy between the Fête and the pilgrimage.

‘It was the completion of a whole week’s celebration for the parish.’

St Helier

  • Born at Tongres in Belgium, St Helier was the son of the Saxon Governor of that place, a pagan.
  • The boy became a convert to Christianity, and after his conversion made his way, to the Abbey of Nanteuil in France where, under St Marculf, he studied the Celtic language until about 545 A.D, when he crossed over to Jersey.
  • Here he took up his abode, so the legend goes, on a rock surrounded by the sea and communicating with the land by a natural causeway, which can be identified as ‘l’Islet,’ a rock south of the Island upon which Elizabeth Castle now stands in St Aubin’s Bay.
  • The cave in which he lived he converted into a cell with part of the rock hewn out to form his couch.
  • For fifteen years he worked amongst the inhabitants of the Island, and his remarkable zeal and the holiness of his life made a great impression on the inhabitants who soon became converted to the faith.
  • At the end of this period Jersey was visited by a band of the dreaded Saxon pirates who landed without resistance, to whom St Helier began to preach the Gospel in their own language urging them to abandon their life of pillage and murder.
  • The pirate chief, fearing that his followers would be induced to give up their present life of piracy, raised his axe, struck the saint on the head, and Jersey’s first martyr fell lifeless at his feet.
  • The Saxons became terrified at this awful murder, and although the weather was stormy, they immediately put to sea, but when nearing Noirmont their ship struck a rock and they all perished.
  • St Helier is now the patron saint of Jersey, and the Island’s capital is named after him.
  • St Helier’s Day falls on 16 July and on the Sunday nearest to that date each year a pilgrimage is made to the Oratory and a short service held on the green immediately below the little building.

[figure caption=”The pilgrimage of 1979 took place under an overcast sky which added a sense of drama to the occasion” title=”Temps Passe Pilgrimage 1979″ align=”none” id=”1418695″ size=”100″]

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