More than 1,200 men transformed Sydney with a city-wide gathering of faith last year. This August they’re back — bigger, bolder, and hungry for more. Are you in?
In 2025, something stirred among the men of this city. In the dead of night, more than a thousand men laced up their boots, stepped out together and walked, praying, singing, keeping vigil before the Eucharist through the Sutherland Shire, in honour of St Joseph.
It is not a protest. It is not a programme. It is a pilgrimage. And it is growing into something no one quite expected.
“Step up, come along, bring a mate, experience the power and the inspiration of men praying together in honour of St Joseph,” urges organiser Michael Jaksic, Camino of St Joseph men’s pilgrimage coordinator within the Life Marriage and Family team within the Sydney Centre for Evangelisation.
This year, the Camino of St Joseph Overnight Pilgrimage for Men returns on 21-22 August, and organisers are calling it the biggest men’s faith walk in Australia. Given what happened last year, that’s not a boast. It’s a forecast.
In 2025, attendance surged 60 per cent, from the 750 who walked in 2024. Shalom World sent a crew to document it. The world is now noticing, with men’s ministry leaders from around Australia, Spain, Argentina, England, France now knocking on Sydney’s door asking how to run their own version.
“It’s reaching far and wide, a lot further and wider than what I’d anticipated,” says Jaksic. “It’s resonating with men globally, not just nationally, and not just within the archdiocese.”
This year, we plan to thread through nearly 20 kilometres of Sydney’s most storied Catholic history, past St Patrick’s Church at The Rocks, where the Eucharist was first reserved on Australian soil while Catholicism was still under persecution; through St Brendan’s in Annandale, St Joseph’s in Camperdown, St Benedict’s in Broadway, St Peter’s in Surry Hills and St Canice’s in Elizabeth Bay; before arriving, in the small hours, at St Mary’s Cathedral, often referred to as the Mother church for Australian Catholics.
“We’re walking in the city,” Jaksic says. “That’s a place where the light of faith needs to be shown. Having 1,200 plus men walk the streets of Sydney will be of great benefit to the churches in the area, and to our city being blessed by the prayers of its men.”
“To finish at our mother church is very providential. We have the Holy Family interceding for us, accompanying us, protecting us,” said Jaksic.
This year, for the first time, Bishop Richard Umbers will walk the entire night alongside the men.
Why does this move men the way it does? Jaksic has thought hard about that question. “Men, in more recent history, have probably stepped away from faith, or at least been isolated from one another,” he says. “There’s a real desire among men to connect in fraternity and brotherhood.”
The Camino meets that desire in the most concrete way imaginable: hours of walking side by side, shared energy, shared fatigue, shared prayer, Eucharistic adoration, and conversations that go somewhere real. Men find themselves, in Jaksic’s words, “rediscovering faith, rediscovering St Joseph, rediscovering authentic masculinity” as brothers, as a community.
“As iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another.” — Proverbs 27:17
“We’re travelling with St Joseph,” Jaksic says. “He’s our model, he’s, our patron. We have Our Lord present in the Eucharist and we have Our Lady.”
His message to the men of Sydney ahead of August is direct. “Get excited,” he says. “St Joseph is doing great things in men’s ministry around the world and especially in our country. Step up. This is an opportunity to be inspired, to take hold of your life as a man, as God intended.”
On the nights of 21 and 22 August, as thousands of footsteps sound through the city, that sharpening will continue, man to man, brother to brother, under the watchful care of St Joseph, in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
For one night each year, the streets of Sydney become a pathway of grace.
The invitation is simple. Step up. Bring a mate. Walk.
For more information go to: https://www.sydneycatholic.org/cas-event/camino2026/
