Pilgrimages as a Factor of Sustainable Development

The article attempts to analyze and valorize pilgrimage as a useful ally of the principle of sustainable development. By diluting its original meaning, the latter often remains a principle only on paper. Initially emphasizing the inclination to comply with sustainable development, tourism has proved to be a significant threat to integrating the natural and social environment. A pilgrimage, due to its motivation and embedding in transcendence, evades being simply reduced to only one of the types of tourism (religious tourism, pilgrimage tourism). It seems to fulfill the demands of sustainable development in a more determined and promising way not only by caring for the environment and culture, but above all by being restrained towards material goods (hiking, everyday necessities).