Livia Tossici-Bolt, 65, who a year and a half ago found herself at the centre of a free speech battle between the US and the UK, has completed a 107 mile pilgrimage to London.
Over the last nine-days, Livia and her three friends have successfully completed an audacious route from Winchester to London following St James’ Way and Shakespeare Way. Over the course of the walk they crawled under fences, survived heavy rain showers, and picked dozens of blackberries and “pilgrim plums”.
Wherever they went they stopped off at churches, both Catholic and Anglican, to share their newly written Canticle for Life. The poignant poem compares the response of the “world” and the “church” to matters of life, death, and suffering before concluding, “That is why we march. Because we love.” Authored by Fr. Thomas Hiney, priest at Sacred Heart Parish in Waterlooville, it is available on YouTube and across social media. It has been viewed over 11K times on X alone.
Accompanying her for large sections of her walk were two fellow Italians and one Brit: Luisa Ferrari, visiting from Brescia, Italy; Carolyn Monteiro, from Portsmouth; and, arguably the most entertaining of the quartet, Elisabetta Pittino, Livia’s life-long friend and President of FederVita Lombardia-APS. Her amusing video journal of the trip can be found here and is well worth watching.
Arrested for Offering Conversation
In March 2023 the Bournemouth-based mother and free speech champion was charged £20,000 and given a criminal record for holding a sign outside her local abortion clinic stating: “Here to talk, if you want”. Her case raised international attention when the US State Department stated on X, “We are concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom,” and said they were “monitoring” Livia’s case.
The same clinic at the centre of the zone conducted 1,055 abortions in 2023. In the last four years, the clinic has overseen 5,621 abortions, 1,657 of which have been between 13–19 weeks gestation.
“I am a strong believer in freedom of expression,” said Tossici-Bolt (a British Italian citizen) the day before she departed on her epic voyage, “For this I have been criminalised. I believe in dialogue; it is important in every street and corner of this country.”
Dismayed by the passing of the Crime and Policing Bill earlier this year, and inspired by the challenge of the Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth, the Right Reverend Philip Egan, “Have we really done everything we can to make our voices heard above the clamour for death?” Livia’s pilgrimage across three counties has been a means of uniting Anglicans, Catholics, and Evangelicals around life.
Pilgrim’s Ponderings
Speaking to me immediately after the completion of their walk Livia stated:
“Today the head is empty and the legs are jelly-wobbly but our souls are refreshed,” said Livia.
“We walked through beautiful villages. Visited every church that was open, leaving our canticle behind. We have done bell ringing, had tea with a 104-year-old descendant of a Tyburn martyr , and re-discovered the UK’s rich pro-life heritage”
While they set out to bless, they soon found that they received more than they gave. Elisabetta Pittino accompanied Livia for large sections of the walk.
“Two things have been beautiful and unexpected. First, the places we’ve seen. You walk and you get touched by surprise, the people, the places, the canal”, she informs me in her wonderful Italian accent, “but the thing I love too much is the blessing. Almost every day we received blessings in the morning, in the evening, blessings that we didn’t organise. Everywhere and everyone has been so welcoming, it’s been unbelievable”.
One of her big reflections over the walk has been the symmetry between the nine-days they spent walking and the nine-months a baby spends developing in the womb.
“I feel like a sort of mother. We’ve learnt to go slowly, to go with time, to listen, to hear, to see, to smell. It has been a gestation of sorts.”
Asked what they had given birth to, Livia interjected:
“To HOPE! To bring back a culture of the infinite beauty and infinite dignity of every human life. We are doing our small bit, but we feel part of this wind of renewal.”
A More Dignified Way to Die
While the walk covered hundreds of miles, one unexpected aspect of the walk was uncovering the rich Christian history of the country, one parish at a time. On the sixth day they arrived at Cookham, which coincidentally. had the church bells ringing at the time. The Church, formerly a monastery, has been an archaeological site under Reading university for the last five years after two dozen diseased skeletons were found nearby.
“They believed it to have been an early hospice”, Livia retold.
With the assisted suicide vote coming up on 11th September I asked Livia what significance she thought it held.
“It shows real care for people who suffer. When we hold the hands of a person suffering, we grow together. We are to care for them and not offer the easy option. I think if the UK rejects this horrible bill and gets over this utilitarian message we will set an example for the whole of Europe, for the whole Western world. We just pray that the UK will be able to reject this culture of death.”
Following the Pilgrimage, the four pilgrims joined thousands of men, women and children for the March for Life in London. In a moving moment after mass they were reunited with the author of the Canticle outside Westminster Cathedral.
Free Speech Champions Unite
Over bank holiday Monday the pilgrims were accompanied by Adam Smith Connor. The Southampton-based Physiotherapist and British military veteran was charged with breaching the Same Public Space Protection Order outside the Bournemouth abortion clinic, not for holding a sign but for praying quietly inside his head.
He walked with pilgrims from Reading Abbey to Henley-on-Thames. He texted me his reflections.
“My feet are sore, but it’s been wonderful to walk a section of the Canticle for Life. Sometimes we have prayed, often out loud. It’s been strange to think that if there had been an abortion clinic within 150 metres of the Thames footpath, we could have been accused of committing a crime. People say that they won’t arrest or prosecute you for praying, but my case, and others such as Livia’s and Isabel’s (Vaughan Spruce), show quite clearly, yes, they will, using the best lawyers and spending tens of thousands of pounds of tax payer money to secure a conviction! This pilgrimage for me, has not simply been about getting from A to B, but remembering the wonderful Christian freedoms we once had in this country and praying for their restoration, so no one risks arrest or prosecution simply for praying, even silently, anywhere in this beautiful country of ours.”
Re-engaging with Hidden England
Fellow pilgrim, Brit, Carolyn Monteiro, who gained a reputation during the walk for being the most fashionable pilgrim, was deeply impacted by many of the places she’d visited.
“On the walk I was very much struck by the Christian heritage we found everywhere”, she informed me.
“Not only churches in every village but in the larger towns like Reading and in Northolt in North West London, you could see that these places have built up around very old churches sitting along ancient paths. It felt like we’d discovered a hidden England.”
On the final day, after mass in Ealing, they were invited to tea with a lady who was 104. Unbeknownst to them she turned out to be the great granddaughter 11 times removed from a Tyburn martyr. A few hours later they stood on the Tyburn stone in North London, their pilgrimage complete.
Tracking their progress on socials over the last nine days I have been heartened by their plodding pilgrimage. “Three Italians and one Brit set off on a pilgrimage…”, sounds like the start of a joke, and while there have been some amusing moments, their pilgrimage has been much more poignant. As they walked ancient paths, sang, prayed or rang bells in 600-year-old church towers, they really did un-cover a hidden and profoundly Christian England, one that may be out of sight, and one that some want to euthanise forever. But one that is still alive and won’t be forsaken by these pilgrims, nor the thousands that they have inspired.
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