While many Catholic business leader strive to adhere to Catholic principles in their work, running a Catholic business with a specifically Catholic goal is a truly golden opportunity to integrate a profound sense of mission with a good job, well done.
For this reason, Catholic businessman Dag Syversen (pictured left), founder and owner of Canterbury Pilgrimage & Tours of Bedford, NH, feels doubly blessed in his work. Catholic Business Journal spoke with Syversen about the challenges and uniquely Catholic vision of the company he’s carved out as a niche in the travel business.
Catholic Business Journal (CBJ): Why did you decide to start a pilgrimage company?
Dag Syversen (DS): I started Canterbury at my high school, Trivium School [Lancaster, MA]. I read Chaucer at Trivium and that’s why we called the business Canterbury Pilgrimages & Tours. When I was a senior in high school there, I led my first pilgrimage to Fatima.
CBJ: What first attracted you to go on pilgrimage?
DS: I came from a large family, 11th out of 12 children. So of course, as we grew up in the 1960s through the 1980s, my folks didn’t have a lot of money to take us on vacation, and by no means any funds to take us abroad. At some point, though, my mother, father and grandmother put some money together to give me an opportunity to go to Fatima.
It was the first time I was in Europe. So I went there in 1984 for two weeks and it was a great opportunity to go to Europe in general. What a phenomenal place it is! The architecture was only one sign that the culture is a lot older than here in the U.S. I fell in love with that part of Europe, and with the message at Fatima and seeing all the pilgrims making their way to see Our Lady of Fatima. The faith that the Portuguese people have was inspiring to me.
I mentioned that we didn’t travel much because we came from a large family and I knew at the time that I needed to come back to Fatima. But how was I going to do that without any money? I knew I wanted to share the experience of pilgrimage with others who were open to it. I wanted to show it to friends, family and people who hadn’t experienced what I had experienced. So the company came about as a combination of that desire to share the experience and by developing a tool for making it happen; it was a simple concept.
I organized my own pilgrimage when I got back. I put a letter together and sent it out to family, friends and folks I was going to school with at the time, inviting them to go to Fatima for a two-week experience. So that’s how I got my first pilgrimage the following May, in 1985, the year I graduated.
CBJ: What have you learned about pilgrimage during your 30 years in the business?
DS: People are usually open to going on pilgrimage, but a lot of people don’t understand what pilgrimage is. The average person out there thinks that we’re going to go to churches every day and pray for hours on end and hear priests talk all day long about penance and all that. They think it’s boring, but it’s really not. When folks find out we’re going to Rome, the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, we learn a lot about our faith and we go to Mass there, for sure. But we’re also learning so much coming out of St. Peter’s and going to other touristic places. It’s a combination of traveling and touring the world with the purpose of the travel grounded in the Catholic faith.
CBJ: Financially speaking, how does a pilgrimage compare to an average American family vacation?
DS: The average person thinks he’s going to have a boring time on a pilgrimage and will be tempted to say, “Forget that! I’m not spending $3,000 on a pilgrimage!” So instead this person will go to Disney World and spend $5,000. Many people do that year after year, but those who break out of that model find out that a pilgrimage is great because they’re touring and seeing great architecture, whether it’s a coliseum, a cathedral or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But they’re also learning about their faith. For example at St. Peter’s, a lot of people don’t realize, the first pope was crucified right there in the square upside down.
CBJ: Why do people resist the idea of pilgrimage?
DS: Many who go on pilgrimage get the rich tradition of the faith on top of their experience of going on a tour. A lot of people go on these pilgrimages and they’ll share a particular pilgrimage experience that changed their life. Maybe they’ve have been away from the faith for a whole facet of reasons, whether they didn’t like the local pastor or had something else happen in their life, or their parents didn’t bring them up in the faith. Whatever the reason, they didn’t have a good experience in the Catholic Church, whether it was warranted or not.
But when they go on a pilgrimage, they get a chance to meet all these other people that they’re sharing this experience with, people like them, who are just living their lives as best they can. Suddenly they’re surprised that the Church really has this opportunity to offer to them…. They experience so much. So basically pilgrimage can shock people and change their understanding of the faith in a good way. They find this experience is great and on top of that they had a good time. At night, during a pilgrimage, we always plan group dinners and those are a big part of the pilgrimage because it’s a time to socialize and get to know each other over a glass of wine and so the sharing of the stories—people love that, because it allows them to say to other people, “I was afraid to say I was enjoying myself.” They’ll often find out they have a lot in common with those they go on pilgrimage with.
CBJ: What’s your business background?
DS: I learned about how to run a business on the ground. I started up the business and then I told myself that I’d like to go to school in the summers and I did that for about two years. For a year I went to Thomas More College [in Merrimack, NH] and then I went to community college for a year and after these two years I lived up in Alaska for awhile. During that time, too, I led two or three pilgrimages. Then I took some time off from both school and leading pilgrimages when I was living in Alaska. I started up the business full time in the 1990s, continuing to learn as I went.
CBJ: What were you doing during your time in Alaska?
DS: I worked on the North Slope and down in Dutch Harbor [both in Alaska] in the early 1990s. I wanted to do pilgrimages full time, so I saved enough money while I was in Alaska to get the business going. I worked on the North Slope, which is in the Artic Circle, during the winter part of the year; I worked up on Prudhoe Bay where the oil fields are, and then in the summer part of the year, I worked down where the fishing boats are, in Dutch Harbor. I worked there long before the Discovery Channel’s TV show “The Deadliest Catch” began filming there. I also worked up on Prudhoe Bay long before the “Ice Road Truckers” TV show on the History Channel.
I worked in both places, between these extremes of Alaska, the far north and the Aleutian Island chain. It was seasonal, so I would travel back and forth between the North Slope and Dutch Harbor. It was an opportunity for me because it was an adventure. It was also good for my business goals because you’re able to save your money when you work up there. The companies you work for pay for all your room and board. You’re up there for four weeks on and two weeks off and usually you don’t have a place to spend your money so you save it. It was a good way to save money to open a business. My initial investment was lots of time! But the actual monetary amount was approximately $40,000, which was primarily used in the business for rent, overhead, advertising and salary. Back in the early 1990’s that went a lot further then it goes today.
CBJ: Was the work in Alaska as dangerous as it appears on these reality TV shows?
DS: Those shows started long after I’d left and I’m not putting myself out there as one who necessarily took part in the sorts of things those shows are portraying. I personally didn’t enjoy that part of it, going out in the boats. After a couple days I decided to take a land job in Dutch Harbor. If you’ve ever watched the show, the boats pull into the docks there—and that’s where I worked. But the work is dangerous for those fellows who go out on the boats. I tried it for a few days but opted for dockside work instead.
On the other hand, working in the oil fields was great; I built ice roads and you hear about those rigs that are driving supplies 30-40 miles off the mainland. Up there the bodies of water where the oil rigs are located are frozen six months of the year. So in the summer all the material is brought out to the rigs by big barges, but in the winter they can’t get them out there because it’s all frozen over and it’s real expensive to fly out by helicopter so they build the ice roads.
You go on top of the natural ice which is three to four feet thick and you drill down with special rigs which augurs down and sucks up the water. By reversing the augur, water comes up and then it freezes to form a sort of natural ice pavement. Then you move down the road and do the same thing until you’ve create a road made six feet thick of ice. The one we built was 26 miles long, out to a place called Sandpiper Island. The truckers used that road six months during the winter to bring material out to the island every day. Then come spring, it melts and you do it all over again the following winter.
CBJ: Did these experiences have any impact on your work as a pilgrimage guide?
DS: When you’re up in Alaska, the interesting thing about being in Dutch Harbor and Prudhoe Bay is the challenge of finding the sacraments. I was baptized and raised a Catholic myself, and go to Mass whenever I can, during the week or on Sundays. But up there in those far-flung places you couldn’t find a priest so easily on Sundays or during the week. So the Catholic community would fly a priest into both places, every two weeks. From this experience, it really came home to me that life itself is a pilgrimage whether we want to connect the Catholic tradition to it or not. So that was a sort of pilgrimage up there, to find a priest to say Mass or hear a confession—and the line wasn’t too long up there because there weren’t that many people! Whenever we did fly the priest in it also brought the missionary aspect of our faith home to us.
CBJ: What were the challenges of starting up your pilgrimage business?
DS: I read somewhere that, statistically speaking, two out of three start-up businesses fail, and a pilgrimage tour company is no different. It had the same challenges any business had. The main thing I saw as a challenge was to go out and find pilgrims who wanted to travel. To solve the problem, we basically began to direct market to customers. We go out and connect with all the Catholic churches and pastors and bishops in the U.S. because that’s where the pilgrims come from. We generally contact pastors and ask them if they would like to walk in the footsteps of our Lord in Jerusalem. We hope each pastor says, “You bet—I’d love to do it!” He in turn will help to promote the pilgrimage on the parish level, inviting his parishioners to travel with him. We’re a full service tour company and do all the work for the pastor. We put everything together for him and he promotes it on the parish level to get people to go.
CBJ: Do you find it easy to persuade pastors to lead pilgrimages?
DS: There are a lot of pastors who for various reasons don’t want to go on pilgrimage, and often the reasons are valid. Pastors these days will have a hard time finding someone to fill in for them while they’re gone. There are ways to get around that, though, because there are a lot of priests who come in to do parish missions. So that’s Canterbury’s challenge—to persuade priests who aren’t already sold on the power of a pilgrimage.
I sometimes joke that the pilgrimage is such a powerful way to experience the faith that I’d like to make it the eighth sacrament! A lot of these pastors don’t realize the power that a pilgrimage can offer their parishioners—even those parishioners who don’t go on the pilgrimage. We recommend to those who go on pilgrimage that they pray for those who couldn’t come and take prayer intentions with them from those back home. So it becomes a parish community pilgrimage even though they all couldn’t be present on the trip.
CBJ: What effect does a pilgrimage have on a parish?
DS: Those parishioners who go on pilgrimage are going to be alive and full of the evangelical spirit. These folks will come back home and help start up different groups [that will foster the faith] in the parish. There’s nothing like going to the Holy Land and seeing the places where Jesus walked. We hear the readings every week and now we’re there. We’re on fire. It will help the pastor in running his parish too. Not everyone comes back on fire but a lot do. It’s also spiritually enriching for the pastor, because he’s like you or me, and he comes back charged up too. It’s really a win-win all the way around.
CBJ: What about those pastors who can’t afford to be absent from their parish for the length of a pilgrimage?
DS: Canterbury has a program whereby we find a priest to come in and assist at a parish or parishes. It’s part of the pilgrimage package and pastors don’t have to find a fellow priest to cover for them. We’re building up our list of priests around the country of those willing to do it. A lot of priests on the list are working missions—so we work with a lot of priests who are not dedicated to one parish. We have their names and addresses and they can come in and take over a priest’s parish for a week. Canterbury would bill it into the cost of the pilgrimage.
Of course, like many companies, Canterbury does not charge the priest. He doesn’t pay but goes for free. So while it’s built into the costs everyone pays, it’s a small cost, to have another priest take over. That’s one way we’re winning over these priests. If a priest is concerned that a visiting priest is authentic—Canterbury verifies each priest is in good standing with the bishops and that sort of thing.
CBJ: Are there any outstanding logistical challenges for Canterbury these days?
DS: One of the biggest challenges a pilgrimage company has to deal with is terrorism in the modern age. Unfortunately that’s a fact as much as I don’t want to say it. But you don’t want this to overshadow the opportunities of pilgrimage. For instance, people don’t want to go to the Holy Land because they hear of a bombing in the news. But the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has a great piece on pilgrimage up on their website. The USCCB tells pilgrims and priests in the U.S. to travel to the Holy Land and not to be dissuaded because of terrorism. Usually an organization like that would err on the safe side and say, “Don’t go!” But the USCCB does just the opposite and they tell pilgrims to go and it’s very safe and they explain in more details why it’s very safe. That same terrorism could happen here in the US, whether visiting Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles. If we want to be faith-filled pilgrims that minimal risk shouldn’t be a deterrent for us.
CBJ: How do you balance this faith-filled sense of mission with your bottom line?
DS: Since Day One of running Canterbury Pilgrimages, I told myself I’m a business not a mission. People call me up and ask if we’re a mission or they’ll thank us for the great mission work we do. I thank them and then correct them, even though I don’t like to, telling them we’re not a mission but a business and try to do the best we can. But we always try to keep the mission concept as part of the focus of the business.
CBJ: How does that sense of mission inform your business practice?
DS: As a business we always look at what the market bears, but we think there is a fair cost for pilgrimage as for anything else. There are pilgrimage companies which might charge a lot more money and that’s fine; it’s a business. But I think there is a fair market value for a pilgrimage. In addition, Canterbury always tries to provide another avenue for those who cannot afford it. For instance, after we send a package proposal, people will call up and say, “That’s too much. Can we do something else?” We try to provide that by booking, say, at a less expensive hotel, and thereby save folks a few hundred dollars to go to Europe. In that case, they’re not staying at a four-star hotel in the city but at a three-star hotel outside the city—but we give them options to fit their budget.
CBJ: What are the rewards of running a pilgrimage business?
DS: I have always had the drive to work for myself and open a business and provide a particular service—a pilgrimage. I wanted to always create a business—it’s the business beast in me. Whether I’d be great at it or not, I always wanted to open a business. I’ve always from early on knew that I was going to do work in a business. Besides being able to integrate my Catholic faith and raise my family on my wages from this business, it’s very rewarding to put a pilgrimage package together with a particular parish or diocese, bring people on the pilgrimage and hear about their stories when they come back about how the pilgrimage changed their life.
In a nutshell that’s the most beneficial thing I’ve gotten out of it—how it changed someone’s life. For some it’s more dramatic and for some it’s a need for a spiritual getaway. But those who shared their experiences say it was incredible and got so much out of it, and they in turn thank me and Canterbury. I’m doing something I enjoy and someone else is also benefiting from it spiritually. As the owner of a pilgrimage company, I hear people say how lucky I am to get to see these places we visit. It’s true—accessing on a regular basis these Marian shrines and other shrines around the world. I’m thankful for the opportunity.
A trip and a half…
A pilgrimage, as Dag Syversen of Canterbury Pilgrimages & Tours says, is a trip—and then some! Have you a hankering to embark on a spiritual journey? Have you found a new depth to your Catholic faith while on pilgrimage? Let Catholic Business Journal know about your pilgrimage adventures, planned or taken, in the Comments section (you must register first to prevent spam), or on our FaceBook page.
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See the UCCSB Holy Land Pilgrimage Guidelines
For Pilgrimage Details: Canterbury Pilgrimages & Tours
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Joseph O’Brien is a Catholic Business Journal correspondent. He may be reached at jobrien@catholicbusinessjournal.biz