Pilgrim´s Way, following in the footsteps of the saint

The Pilgrim´s Way connects Giulio Césare with Villa Cura Brochero. It is a journey of 28 km with 8 stations to reflect and pray. Each one is identified with a totem 6 m high. In the middle of the tour, in Villa Benegas, there is a service and rest area. It will depend on the physical conditions, but in general the walk demands between 6 and 7 hours.

The unstoppable cure
It is the road that San Gabriel Brochero traveled, the saint who lived in Córdoba. The pilgrimage has a very important foundation in the dissemination of the life and work of the dear saint. The promotion of religious tourism also focuses on the beauties of the Traslasierra Valley, west of the Sierras Grandes, whose most populated locations are Mina Clavero and Villa Cura Brochero.

The priest from Cordoba took his evangelizing work throughout the Traslasierra Valley. Hence the name adopted by the town that saw him walk and work with pure lungs. José Gabriel del Rosario Brochero was born in 1840 in Santa Rosa, in Rio Primero. After being ordained as a priest in 1866 and a short performance in the Cathedral of Cordoba, in 1869 he moved to the department of San Alberto as vicar. It was a very dispersed population between the mountains and the valley, without schools or roads. The priest Brochero chose the mule to walk, he pioneered the roads of the High Summits, walked through the peripheries looking for the people who needed him.

In the years of hard work and apostolate, he opened roads; founded towns; he built schools, churches, post offices and telegraph offices; He procured an aqueduct, canals, ditches and dikes, and drifted by the arrival of the railroad. With the help of his parishioners, he built the House of Spiritual Exercises and the College for Girls, miracles if we consider poverty and the fragile means he had.

At the beginning of his priesthood, his most tiring and heroic stage was the care of cholera sufferers during an epidemic that hit the city of Córdoba. His evangelizing passion meant that he did not fear illness or misery and that an inexhaustible flow of charity flowed from his heart.

He became ill with leprosy and died in 1914. He was canonized in 2016 in a ceremony held by Pope Francis, and thus the Argentines have a very beloved saint in the figure of the priest gaucho. San Gabriel Brochero left his legacy in the identity and development of the Cordoba town that bears his name.