Since we cannot rely on the government, we can only trust that Our Lady will help us. (Portuguese pilgrim, informal interview, May 2016) Based on intensive fieldwork in Portugal in occasion of the centenary celebrations of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima (2016 and 2017), 1 this chapter explores the experiences of Portuguese Catholic pilgrims walking from their hometowns to the Marian shrine of Fátima to attend the annual celebrations of the Marian apparitions in May and October. I argue that in a historic moment in which the Portuguese face economic difficulties that have forced many of them to emigrate and in which the state is incapable of guaranteeing real democracy offering a solution to the strongly polarized distribution of wealth, these pilgrimages appear as strategies to reaffirm grassroots forms of solidarity and democracy. I explore how embodying desired social changes through rituals and ritual objects that form part of the pilgrimage can have empowering effects for the pilgrims. Following Catherine Bell (1990, 1992, 2009), I consider ritualization as a ‘strategic mode of production’ that is intended to change a set of social categories by creating a shift in dominance among a set of symbols in a way that sanctions parallel social changes in the non-ritual world (Bell 1990: 304). As Bell observes, ritualization addresses core contradictions between cultural ideals and current conditions. Through ritual it is possible to redefine and reconceptualize these contradictions through the use of symbols, ritualized objects and the ritualized body. In this way rituals can become vehicles of resistance and subversion. I am also influenced by other scholars in ritual studies such as Ronald Grimes (2000, 2006), Graham Harvey (2005), Michael Houseman (2007, 2010) Sarah Pike (2017) and Jone Salomonsen (2002, 2003), who have analysed the 6 Walking pilgrimages to the Marian Shrine of Fátima in Portugal as democratic explorations Anna Fedele 9781350123014_txt_prf.indd 105 5/31/2020 12:54:58 PM