A Comparative Survey on the Status of Pilgrimage in Catholicism and in Shi ism

Using an analytical and theoretical approach, this research aims to demonstrate the status of pilgrimage in Catholicism and in Shi’ism and underlines the similarities and differences between them. According to the Catholic Church, the church is regarded as God’s house and a place for holding religious rituals. The churches, convents and places of pilgrimage are the proper places for man to establish relations with God. In Shi’ism, building shrines in the site of the graves of the friends of God is given special attention and considering God’s friends as a means for intercession and meditation with God, the pious think that they can get God’s blessing through them. Both the Shi’a and the Catholic attempt to make their followers have a deep sense of pilgrimage and perform it as a kind of mystic rite. The main concern of the two religions is dissociation from this world and seeking for the eternal world. The main difference between the Catholic and the Shi’a about the concept of being pilgrim-like to the heavenly city of Jerusalem in Catholic is that pilgrimage in Catholicism, means living strangely on the land which has its root in such beliefs like the First Sin, Jesus Cross and the ascent of Jerusalem to sky. Shi’ism rejects such a doctrine.