The pilgrimage to Santiago shows "God does not make distinctions because of disability"

Alvaro Calvente, 15 years old, defines himself as a young man with "skills you can't even imagine", who dreams of meeting Pope Francis and who sees the Eucharist as the "biggest celebration", so he spends several hours a day repeating the words of the Mass to himself.

He and his father Idelfonso, together with a family friend Francisco Javier Millan, are walking about 12 miles a day to try to reach Santiago de Compostela, one of the most famous pilgrimage sites in the world, along the Camino de Santiago, known in English as the way of San Giacomo.

The pilgrimage began on July 6 and was originally intended to involve dozens of young people from the parish of Alvaro, but due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, they had to cancel it.

"But Alvaro does not forget his commitments to God, so we decided to go alone, and then Francisco to join because he loves Alvaro",

Alvaro is the seventh of 10 children, although he is the only one to make the pilgrimage with his father. He was born with an intellectual disability resulting from a genetic disorder.

"We walk about 12 miles a day, but marked by Alvaro's pace," he said. The pace is slow, because Alvaro has "a mutation of two genes that allows him to manipulate people, for example, walking to Santiago", but it is also slow because the young man stops to greet every cow, bull, dogs and, of course, all the other pilgrims they meet along the way.

“The biggest challenge was understanding and seeing that God does not make distinctions because you have a disability,” said Idelfonso on the phone, “on the contrary: he favors and cares for Alvaro. We live day by day and thank God for what we have today, knowing that he will provide for tomorrow ”.

To prepare for the pilgrimage, Alvaro and his father started walking 5 miles a day in October, but had to stop training because of the pandemic. But even without adequate preparation, they decided to continue the pilgrimage with "the certainty that God will open the way for us to reach Santiago".

"As a matter of fact, we have just finished our longest walk, 14 miles, and Alvaro arrived at his destination singing and giving blessings," said Idelfonso on Wednesday.

They opened a Twitter account on the eve of the pilgrimage and with a little help from Alvaro's uncle, Antonio Moreno, a Catholic journalist from Malaga, Spain, famous in the Spanish-speaking Twitter sphere for his discussions on saints and holy days, El Camino de Alvaro soon had 2000 followers.

"I didn't even know how Twitter worked before I opened the account," said Idelfonso. “And suddenly, we had all these people from all over the world walking with us. It is shocking, because it helps to make God's love visible: it is truly everywhere. "

They share several daily posts, all in Spanish, with their daily adventures, by Alvaro who repeats the formula of the Mass and the three songs of the Mass.