(DCNF)—At least 1,000 Catholics gathered Saturday to publicly demonstrate their faith, participating in a Eucharistic procession near the White House ahead of America’s 250th birthday.
The procession was the highlight of the fourth annual event sponsored by the Archdiocese of Washington’s Catholic Information Center (CIC), organized under a theme of “One Nation Under God.” Led by CIC Director Fr. Charles Trullols, Saturday’s event began with 9 a.m. Mass outside the CIC’s office before the 10 a.m. walking procession. It looped through northwest D.C.’s Farragut Square, Lafayette Square — passing the White House — and McPherson Square before concluding back at the CIC around noon. The procession occurred within a month of Rededicate 250, an event in which thousands of other Christians from across the nation gathered to engage in public prayer and worship.
“The Eucharist is the source and summit of the whole Christian life. A Eucharistic Procession, therefore, is a public witness of the veneration of the most holy Eucharist, conducted through public streets,” the CIC website states. “It takes place in this way: A consecrated host – that is, the real and substantial presence of Jesus Christ: body, blood, soul and divinity – is placed within a monstrance, which is then lifted and carried by a priest who leads the faithful in procession.”
“A Eucharistic procession is a public expression of our devotion and belief in the True Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist,” a statement by Fr. Trullols sent to the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) reads. “This year’s procession is especially meaningful to me, as Pope Leo XIV leads a Eucharistic procession this weekend in my home country of Spain, which historically suppressed Eucharistic processions in the 1930s.”
“As we approach America’s 250th birthday, we join the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage in remembering and giving thanks for being One Nation Under God,” he continues. “We ask God to bless the United States and pray that hearts be set aflame with love for the Source and Summit of the Christian life.”
This year’s procession was part of a larger national effort, the 2026 Eucharistic Pilgrimage, involving nine people known as “Perpetual Pilgrims” who have dedicated a significant amount of their time and energy to “walk with Christ so that His love might draw our nation back to him,” the National Eucharistic Congress’s website states. It began May 24 in St. Augustine, Fla., and ends July 5 in Philadelphia.
The over 2,000-mile route — involving at least 18 Catholic archdioceses and dioceses in 14 East Coast states — being undertaken by the Perpetual Pilgrims is named for Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, a Catholic religious sister from Italy who became the first canonized American citizen. St. Cabrini established 67 hospitals, schools, and orphanages over 34 years.
The DCNF interviewed several attendees of the procession about their motivations for and experiences of participating in such a public witness of faith.
“I applied to be a Perpetual Pilgrim because I saw this as an opportunity to realign my own life under the sovereignty of Jesus Christ and to put myself directly before His gaze,” Perpetual Pilgrim Mary Zakrajsek told the DCNF.
“This National Eucharistic Pilgrimage has deepened my awareness of Jesus truly present in the Blessed Sacrament,” she continued. “As we as pilgrims drive with Jesus in the van from city to city, and walk behind Him on foot, or travel with Him by boat, I am reminded of His continual and loving Presence with us. He hasn’t left us. He is still here. In the Eucharist, Jesus allows Himself to be carried, exposed, and vulnerable before us.”
“As we take Jesus across our nation’s land, I am confident that God’s graces pour out,” Zakrajsek added. “In each Eucharistic procession, I pray that Jesus will bless, heal, and renew the community we journey through. And He will.”
Raymond Martinez II, a seminarian of the Diocese of San Angelo, Texas, told the DCNF his decision to become a Perpetual Pilgrim followed “[his] desire to spread devotion to our Lord in the Eucharist.”
“Throughout the pilgrimage I have been able to witness people showing up for Our Lord and their incredible devotion and love for Our Lord in the Eucharist,” he said. “The pilgrimage has taught me that no matter who you are or what stage in life you are, you can show up for Christ. We’ve seen people as old as 96 and as young as a few weeks old, people in walkers and wheelchairs as well as children in strollers and on scooters. Each person who has come has been able to encounter Our Lord.”
“No matter what you sacrifice to show up for the Lord, He will repay you a hundredfold for your sacrifice,” he added.
When asked what Americans can learn from St. Cabrini’s life, Martinez said, “People can take inspiration from St. Francis Xavier Cabrini by welcoming each and every person they meet into an encounter with Our Lord in the Eucharist.”
“St. Francis Xavier Cabrini was a woman who turned to God continuously, amidst setbacks and trials in this life, it was Jesus in whom she put her trust and found the strength to keep moving forward. I think our country can learn a lot of from her devotion to Our Lord, and even as we experience trials, to not lose our gaze on the One true thing that matters,” Zakrajsek likewise told the DCNF.
While the Perpetual Pilgrims are the only ones officially making the full journey, approximately 10,000 other people have participated in partner Eucharistic processions, according to the National Eucharistic Congress.
The Perpetual Pilgrims also accompanied Fr. Trullols in an act of Eucharistic devotion Saturday at the Washington Monument to bless the United States ahead of the semiquincentennial anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage is honored to visit our nation’s capital in partnership with the Catholic Information Center’s annual Eucharistic Procession,” a statement by National Eucharistic Congress President Jason Shanks sent to the DCNF reads. “In solidarity with Pope Leo XIV — the first American pope — who also carried the Eucharist through the streets of Rome last year for Corpus Christi, Catholics are bringing that same public witness to the heart of Washington. This procession is both an act of faith and a prayer for the country: that amid division and uncertainty, Americans remember that human dignity, freedom, and unity are rooted in something greater than politics or ideology.”
Gen Z conversions to Catholicism have recently skyrocketed, the DCNF previously reported.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.