St. John's University history professor John Rao, a traditionalist Roman Catholic, has made the three-day pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres Cathedral more than half a dozen times and says the experience is filled with ritual, ceremony, and spiritual fervor.

It was a week of prayers and pleas for peace and gestures of reconciliation to all sides in the Holy Land.

In most of the world, the poor and sick are ignored. In Lourdes, they are number one, and people say they are drawn there because they believe it is a place of great faith.

Thousands of people every week are still visiting the site where the World Trade Center once stood. But five years since 9/11, Lucky Severson says, there's still so much traffic and construction and so much controversy about how to rebuild that it's hard to feel Ground Zero as sacred space.

Read a meditation on the processions of Holy Week by Benedicta Ward, historian of Christian spirituality at the University of Oxford.

The Taizé community has no preaching but has become famous for its simple, meditative music and prayer.