For more than a thousand years, people have walked the Way of St. James, the Camino de Santiago, to the tomb of the apostle in Santiago de Compostela. They come for faith, for grief, for gratitude, for a fresh start, or simply for the walk. In 2025, 530,987 pilgrims received the Compostela in Santiago, the highest number ever recorded.
How we began. Camino for Good started in 2020, when the pandemic closed the Camino. Five pilgrims who had walked it built a virtual Camino app, so people at home could walk their own streets and move along the real route to Santiago, town by town. Part of every sign-up went to the albergues, the pilgrim hostels that suddenly had no pilgrims and no income. Between 2020 and 2022, Camino for Good members helped keep 24 albergues and hospitaleros in Spain and Portugal going, about $75,000 in all. When the Camino reopened and the emergency passed, we ended that relief fund. Their names are still listed on our Where your money goes page.
What we are today. In 2022, James M. Gehrke, MS, DMin, bought Camino for Good from its founders. He and Angela Gehrke, MSW, LCSW, now run it from Hurricane, Utah. James wrote his Doctor of Ministry project on pilgrimage and the Camino for Good app. Together we offer four ways to walk:
- The virtual Camino. The Finisterre–Muxía route, 215 km or 133 miles, is free for good. The Francés, Norte and Vía de la Plata can be added one at a time, or all together with the Pilgrim Pass.
- Books. Devotionals and companions by James for the year before you go and the weeks you are on the way.
- Hosted pilgrimages. Small groups walking the real Camino with us: the Camino Francés from León in 2026, and Porto to Santiago on the Camino Portugués in April 2027.
- The Pilgrim Grant. Part of everything we sell sends at least one pilgrim a year to Santiago who could not otherwise go, with the fare and airfare paid in full.
The spirit has not changed since 2020: the hospitality, friendship and joy we received from the people of the Camino, passed on to the next pilgrim.
