The Origin and Functioning of the Lviv Way of St. James Via Regia and Its Importance in the Development of Pilgrimages and Religious Tourism at the Polish-Ukrainian Border

Abstract

Inclusion of the Polish sections of the Way of St. James in the European network of Camino de Santiago gave impetus to marking the Way of St. James within the territory of Ukraine. On the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Polish section of Camino de Santiago, on 10 October 2015 and 11 October 2015 in Shehyni and Medyka at the Polish-Ukrainian border, the first Ukrainian section of Camino de Santiago, the so-called Lviv Way of St. James Via Regia was connected with the Polish section of the St. James’s route – The Subcarpathian Way of St. James Via Regia. The objective of the paper is to present the origin and development of the first Ukrainian section of the Way of St. James – the Lviv Way of St. James Via Regia. Authors of the paper have also indicated the possibilities of development of the pilgrimages and religious tourism at the Polish-Ukrainian borderland on the basis of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. In the research related to religious tourism in the examined area only Catholic church sanctuaries (Catholic church of the Latin rite and Byzantine-Ukrainian rite) located in the frontier zone at the Polish-Ukrainian borderland were taken into account. From the perspective of functioning of the Route of St. James at the Polish-Ukrainian Borderland for over a year it may be stated that it may become an important and popular section of Camino de Santiago in this part of Europe. Studies conducted confirm that this section of the route is attended by Camino pilgrims seeking silence, solitude and a kind of counterbalance to the increasingly commercialized Camino de Santiago in Spain, especially its final 100-kilometer sections leading to the sanctuary in Santiago de Compostela. The presented thesis constitutes a result of the office and field works that have been conducted by the authors on the European sections of the Way of St. James since 2006. These research works have been focused mainly on the section Camino de Santiago at the Polish- Ukrainian borderland since 2013.