São Pedro de Rates on the Camino Portugués: A Purification Ceremony I Didn’t Expect

I Was Already Carrying More Than My Backpack

My previous stage had taken me from Labruge toward Rates, pulling me away from the Atlantic and farther into the Portuguese countryside.

That day had been wet, physically demanding, and emotionally noisy.

In my journal from Labruge to Rates , I wrote about grief and the way anger often sat on top of everything else I was feeling. Walking gave those emotions nowhere to hide.

There are surprisingly few distractions when your day consists mostly of following yellow arrows, watching the weather, finding coffee, and putting one foot in front of the other.

Thoughts you can usually bury beneath work, screens, errands, noise, and routine begin walking beside you.

Mine did.

Grief Did Not Look Like Sadness All the Time

Before the Camino, I had spent a lot of time thinking about grief as sadness.

But sadness was not always the emotion that showed up.

Sometimes grief looked like frustration.

Sometimes it looked like impatience.

Sometimes it looked like anger at how unfair life could be.

I had lost people I cared about, and I kept circling questions that did not have satisfying answers. Why them? Why now? Why do some genuinely good people leave far too early?

Walking twenty-something kilometers does not answer that.

But exhaustion has a way of weakening the little walls we build around difficult questions.

By the time I reached Rates, I was beginning to understand that I did not need to win an argument with grief. I needed to stop pretending anger meant I was somehow doing grief incorrectly.

What Happened During the Purification Ceremony

The ceremony happened as part of a community gathering in Rates.

I had not planned it. I had not researched it before arriving. It was not sitting on some carefully organized Camino spreadsheet between “laundry” and “find dinner.”

That lack of expectation probably mattered.

The focus was on intense emotions—particularly grief and anger—and creating a space where those feelings could be acknowledged rather than immediately pushed away.

We were in a quiet setting where the sounds of water and the surrounding environment created a natural pause from the movement of the Camino.

People were invited to reflect, talk, and share.

There was no pressure to produce a revelation.

That was important to me.

I did not suddenly understand every loss I had experienced. I did not walk away with a neat explanation for death, grief, anger, or why life distributes pain so unevenly.

What I did feel was permission to stop fighting the fact that those emotions existed.

The ceremony did not remove what I was carrying. It changed the way I was carrying it.

Is a Purification Ceremony a Standard Camino de Santiago Tradition?

No—not in the sense that every pilgrim should expect to encounter this exact experience.

The Camino de Santiago is a centuries-old pilgrimage network filled with religious traditions, local customs, pilgrim blessings, church services, private reflection, communal meals, and countless personal rituals.

But individual Camino experiences vary enormously.

I do not want to turn one meaningful night in Rates into a claim that a “Camino purification ceremony” is a standardized part of the route.

It was part of my Camino.

Yours may contain something entirely different.

I Did Not Wake Up Healed. I Woke Up Lighter.

The next morning, I packed my backpack and left Rates for Tamel.

There was no cinematic transformation.

My feet still hurt.

The weather still had its own ideas.

I still carried grief.

But there was a little more room around it.

In my Camino journal from Rates to Tamel , I shifted toward gratitude—another emotion that became part of how I was processing the journey.

That did not mean anger disappeared.

Gratitude and anger can exist in the same person on the same morning.

So can grief and laughter.

The Camino kept teaching me that emotions did not need to line up neatly before I was allowed to keep moving.

Why the Camino Created Space for Emotions I Had Avoided

I can only speak for my own Camino.

For me, the emotional part of the pilgrimage did not come from a mystical property embedded in the trail.

It came from simplicity.

My normal life contained constant input: work, technology, decisions, messages, plans, obligations, and enough noise to avoid sitting with almost anything for very long.

On the Camino, my daily world became smaller.

• Wake up.
• Pack the backpack.
• Find the yellow arrows.
• Walk.
• Find coffee.
• Walk some more.
• Eat.
• Sleep.

That repetition created long stretches where my mind had nowhere else to go.

The ceremony in Rates mattered partly because the walking had already opened the door.

It arrived at exactly the point when I was beginning to recognize what I had brought onto the trail.

What I Would Tell Someone Walking the Camino With Grief

I would not promise the Camino will heal you.

I would not promise a spiritual breakthrough.

And I definitely would not tell someone that walking to Santiago is a substitute for professional support when they need it.

What I can say is that the Camino can create time.

Time to think.

Time to be quiet.

Time to talk to strangers who somehow become confidants because neither of you has anywhere else to be.

Time to become physically tired enough that the polished version of yourself becomes difficult to maintain.

If you are planning your own pilgrimage, my complete Camino Portuguese guide covers routes, stages, costs, accommodation, training, packing, and what walking from Porto toward Santiago actually felt like.

Camino Purification Ceremony FAQ