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498 religion
covering shorter or longer distances, and sometimes
very long ones to follow their religious need
or perform an act designated by their religion.
This religious nucleus is persistent enough on a
global scale to overcome class, national, ideological,
age, professional or any other affiliation.
Theories of tourism consider this movement as
one whose participants are motivated either in part
or exclusively for religious reasons. Religious
tourism most often appears in three forms: as a
pilgrimage, a continuous group and individual
visit to religious shrines; as large-scale gatherings
on the occasion of significant religious dates and
anniversaries; and as tours of and visits to
important religious places and buildings within
the framework of a tourist itinerary, regardless of
the time of the tour. The most popular pilgrimage
destinations in the world are Rome, Lourdes,
Compostela, Loretto, Fatima, Einsiedeln, Medjugorje,
Czestochowa, Guadeloupe and others for
Christians; Mecca and Medina for Muslims;
Varanasi �Benares), Allahabad, Lumbina, Leshan
and Mandalay for Buddhists and Hindus; Lhasa
for believers in Tibetan Buddhism; and Jerusalem
for Christians, Jews and Muslims �see Holy Land).
Religious ceremonies and commemoration days,
the climatic location of the pilgrimage sites and
the work calendar of the population are the main
reasons that religious tourism is bound to a certain
seasonality. Religious tourism is closely connected
with cultural tourism. For pilgrims, a
free day is often planned in the programme so that
they can also make trips into the surrounding
tourism area. Religious tourism has also political
aspects. Numerous religious places are also national
sites. Some authors have tried to determine
how and to what extent the phenomenon of
pilgrimage and tourism differs. They have even
attempted to establish certain similarities between
these phenomena and to find arguments to support
the thesis that tourism as a kind of pilgrimage of
modern civilisation. The more serious forms of
tourism, where the motives of the journey are more
substantial than pure recreation and entertainment,
are analogous to the ecstatic forms of
pilgrimage in their spiritual meaning for the
tourist, but the symbolic language in which
tourists are obliged to express their pilgrimage is
different. On their journeys, they always move
towards destinations which are a kind of symbol of
their wishes and needs, just as pilgrims do when
they head towards the shrine to which the
pilgrimage is being made.
Religious tourism is certainly a clearer concept
in its secular interpretation. From the perspective
of tourism, the religious motive is only one
among many which impels tourism movements.
Consequences for all categories involved in the
process are important: the travellers-believers, the
providers of services and the space �region) in
which such movement takes place or toward which
they are directed. The theory of tourism considers
that a part of religious tourist's behaviour is
simply activities which serve to fulfil basic religious
needs.
Theological explanations of the concept of
religious tourism have a similar point of departure,
but there are differences here between religions.
There are those who deny totally such intermingling
of the religious and the profane. They
attribute tourism as applied to the concept of
religion as not even mentioned anywhere in
Buddhism, for instance, and Islam avoids this
concept or tries to distance itself from it, while
Roman Catholicism, although it does not accept
explicitly the possibility that a religiously motivated
journey may bear the attribute of the tourist, does
not totally deny it. However, theologians are
reluctant to talk about religious trips as a specific
form of tourism. On the contrary, those religious
teachings in which the stance toward tourism has
been expressed in a relatively strong and welldefined
manner, as is the case with the Catholic
church and Islam, advocate quite clearly the
standpoint that adopting the concept of religious
tourism would mean accepting the idea that
religion can have another meaning and goal apart
from that of faith. In other words, theologians deny
that religious motives can be called touristic. By
their opinion, the fact that believers on religious
journeys have to satisfy their biological needs is not
a sufficient argument for the whole phenomenon to
acquire a touristic �i.e., profane) rather than a
religious character. And on the other hand, the fact
that they may have religious needs does not mean
that tourists should be seen primarily as believers.
The Catholic church advocates `the religious
and moral dangers of tourism' and the `heavy