A modern Franciscan pilgrimage from a California mission, through Marin and across the Golden Gate, into the city that carries the saint's name.
Route facts · At a glance
The route is new, and the honest facts about it are the published total, the two missions at either end, and the credential. Section mileage in the official materials does not yet reconcile, so this page does not publish a stage table.
01 · Route overview
Route overview, not a navigation map. Sacred stops and broad legs only.
The road
Sacred stops on the way
Regions crossed: San Rafael and the Marin parishes · Corte Madera and Mill Valley · The Marin Headlands · The Golden Gate and the Presidio · North Beach · Cathedral Hill · The Mission
02 · The walk in practice · Time, terrain, and difficulty
The organizers publish a total of about 24.56 miles and divide the walk into sections. Those section figures do not add to the total and two of them cover overlapping ground, so this page keeps the total and describes broad legs instead of publishing a stage table. Use the official route pages for current directions.
Difficulty by route
Marin to the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge on day one, the bridge and the city on day two. The inaugural pilgrimage walked about fifteen miles on its first day.
The bridge, the Presidio, North Beach, the shrine, the cathedral and Mission Dolores. The densest stretch of sacred geography on the route.
Mission San Rafael, the Marin parishes, and the climb through the headlands. Quieter, harder, and the part most pilgrims underestimate.
Suburban streets and creekside paths through San Rafael, Larkspur, Corte Madera and Mill Valley; open fire road and coastal hill through Tennessee Valley and the Marin Headlands; the bridge walkway; then Presidio paths and San Francisco pavement with real climbs between North Beach, Cathedral Hill and the Mission.
There is no single pass, but the headland crossing and the San Francisco hills together make this harder than a flat twenty-four miles.
The route is published as directions rather than signed on the ground. Download or print the official route before walking, and do not rely on finding waymarks.
Coastal fog, wind on the bridge, exposed headland sections without water, and stamp churches with limited hours are the four things that most often go wrong. Check the official pages for current trail conditions and closures.
Begin this route
Nearly everything that goes wrong on this route is a matter of hours: a gift shop shut, a stamp missed, a church closed when you reach it. Fix the hours before you fix the day.
Mission San Rafael Arcangel to the Marin Headlands, walked early enough to reach the bridge in daylight.
Not applicable. This is a two-day route, or two separate days.
Cathedral Hill down into the Mission, arriving at the Old Mission chapel rather than the basilica beside it.
Take the San Francisco half. It carries four of the seven stamp churches and the densest sacred geography on the route.
Plan the headland crossing around fog, wind and daylight, and carry water. There is little shelter between Mill Valley and the bridge.
Verify the current route directions, trail closures, bridge walkway access, and the opening hours of every stamp church with the official Camino de San Francisco pages.
Pilgrims who want the quiet half first
The mission, the Marin parishes, and the long rise through the headlands to the north end of the bridge.
Stamp locations in Marin keep limited gift-shop and office hours. Check them the same week.
The densest stretch of the route
Across the Golden Gate into the Presidio, then North Beach, the National Shrine, the cathedral and the arrival at Mission Dolores.
Certificates are issued at the Mission Dolores gift shop, which does not keep the same hours as the church.
Limited time
A single day in the city for a pilgrim who cannot give the route a weekend.
A section walked alone does not earn the Compostela.
03 · Historical context
The Camino de San Francisco is new. It was conceived by Father Christopher Iwancio, a Capuchin Franciscan and director of Modern Catholic Pilgrim, after he walked the mission route in San Antonio, and it was developed with the historian Christian Clifford and Peter Marlow of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The Archdiocese, the National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi, Modern Catholic Pilgrim and the Capuchin Franciscans of Western America present it together. The first organized pilgrimage set out from Mission San Rafael Arcangel in February 2026.
St. Francis never crossed the Atlantic. He died at Assisi in 1226, five and a half centuries before the mission that bears his name was founded beside a creek the Spanish called the Arroyo de los Dolores. What the route follows is not his footsteps but his name and his spirit, carried into California by the Franciscans who founded the missions and kept in the city, the mission and the national shrine that still bear it.
The ground itself is old, and it is not only Catholic ground. Coast Miwok people lived in the Marin country the route crosses, and Ramaytush Ohlone people in the San Francisco peninsula where it ends. Both missions were built by Indigenous labour, and both carry the losses of the mission system as well as its sacramental life. The route passes through that history rather than around it.
04 · Why this route matters
A pilgrimage short enough for a weekend and long enough to require intention, in a landscape that moves from mission garden to open headland to city street in a single day.
The route puts creation and city in the same walk. The headlands above the Pacific and the streets of North Beach are both part of it, and neither is treated as scenery for the other.
It begins at an asistencia founded as a hospital for the sick of Mission Dolores and ends at Mission Dolores itself. The two ends of the route were bound together from the start, and walking between them restores a real historical relationship.
The organizers designed the route so that pilgrims pass people living unsheltered in the city, and they name the corporal and spiritual works of mercy as part of it. This is not incidental to a Franciscan route.
There is a passport, there are stamps collected at named churches, and there are certificates issued only at the end. The structure is the same one a pilgrim meets in Spain.
Most Catholics will never have four weeks for a European Camino. This one fits a weekend, which is the reason it will do more good than a longer route would.
05 · The ways within the route · Several established routes
One route, walked in one of three ways. The organizers divide it into sections for planning; this page keeps those sections geographic rather than reproducing mileage figures that do not reconcile.
Mission San Rafael to Mission Dolores
The form the inaugural pilgrimage walked: a long day through Marin to the bridge, then the crossing and the city.
Mission San Rafael to the Golden Gate Bridge
The harder and quieter half, through the Marin parishes and up over the headlands.
The Golden Gate Bridge to Mission Dolores
The bridge, the Presidio, North Beach, the shrine, the cathedral and the mission, with four stamp churches in one day.
Walking a half does not earn the Compostela, which the organizers reserve for pilgrims who complete the whole route. The Certificate of Distance is the other option.
06 · Sacred stops along the way · Churches, shrines, and holy places
The sacred stops the organizers name, in walking order. Some are stamp locations; not every stamp location is a place that asks for a long visit.
Mission · start · stamp
San Rafael, California
Founded in 1817 as a hospital asistencia of Mission Dolores. The chapel beside the parish church is a 1949 reconstruction; the mission it reproduces was pulled down in the nineteenth century.
Parish church · stamp
Greenbrae, Marin County
The first stamp after the mission, early enough in the day that most pilgrims are still fresh.
Parish church · stamp
Larkspur, Marin County
A parish established in 1915, on Magnolia Avenue where the route turns south through the Marin towns.
Open country
Marin County
The part of the route that is not a church and not a street. Tennessee Valley, Oakwood Valley and the ridges above the Pacific, where the bridge first comes into view.
Crossing
San Francisco Bay
The hinge of the whole route. The pilgrim walks out of Marin and into the city of St. Francis on foot, which is the thing the route exists to make possible.
Chapel · waypoint
Presidio of San Francisco
A 1931 Spanish Colonial Revival chapel on the Presidio, near ground associated with the first Catholic Mass celebrated here in 1776. The route passes it rather than stopping long.
Church · stamp
North Beach, San Francisco
The twin-spired Salesian church on Washington Square, completed in 1924 and still the Italian parish of North Beach, now with Cantonese Masses as well.
National shrine · stamp
North Beach, San Francisco
The devotional centre of the route. Franciscan relics, Capuchin friars, and the Porziuncola Nuova, a modern reproduction of the little chapel at Assisi.
Cathedral · stamp
Cathedral Hill, San Francisco
The mother church of the archdiocese, blessed in 1971. A deliberate contrast on a route that has already passed through an eighteenth-century mission and a nineteenth-century Gothic shrine.
Mission · finish · stamp
The Mission, San Francisco
Mission Dolores, founded in 1776. The chapel completed in 1791 is the oldest intact building in San Francisco, and the cemetery beside it holds some five thousand Ohlone, Miwok and other First Californians.
07 · Associated saints · Saints connected to the route
One saint holds this route together, and he never saw the country it crosses.
Route saint · Feast October 4
The mission at the end, the city around it, and the national shrine in North Beach all carry his name. Francis never travelled to California; the route follows his spirit and his memory rather than his steps, and Assisi remains the place where his body lies.
Franciscan companion · Feast August 11
Relics of Clare are kept at the National Shrine alongside those of Francis, which is the one point on the route where the Franciscan story is not only about the road.
Franciscan preacher · Feast June 13
Relics of Anthony are also identified among those kept at the National Shrine of St. Francis.
St. Raphael the Archangel gives the starting mission its name, and the route's first church is dedicated to him.
08 · How to walk it · Practical notes
Buy the passport first
Passports are sold at Mission San Rafael, the cathedral and Mission Dolores. Buying at the start is the only version that works, because the stamps are collected on the way.
Collect two stamps a day
The organizers ask for at least two stamps per day, one in the morning and one later, before either certificate is issued.
Treat the first day as the hard one
The Marin half has the hills, the exposure and the fewest places to stop. Start early and do not plan the headland crossing for late afternoon.
Give the shrine real time
The Porziuncola at the National Shrine keeps short hours of its own, separate from the church. If it matters to you, plan the day around it.
Finish inside the Old Mission
The 1791 chapel is a small, dim, quiet room, and it is the actual end of the route. The basilica next door is a different building.
Let the city be part of the prayer
The organizers built the works of mercy into this route deliberately. The stretch through the city is not an obstacle between churches.
The Camino de San Francisco publishes the route, the sacred sites, the pilgrim passport and the certificates at caminosanfrancisco.org, with the route directions hosted by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Route reality
Eternal Roam gives the sacred geography and the reasons to walk it. For directions, closures and current trail conditions, use the organizers.
None as a road. The route is modern, inaugurated in 2026, and built to connect California Catholic places that are genuinely old.
Route directions are published online section by section. There is no continuous waymarked trail, and the published section mileage does not reconcile with the published total.
High for most of the route. Marin towns and San Francisco supply food, water and transit throughout; the headland crossing does not.
Sacred stops, broad legs, and the shape of the corridor. Not a stage map and not a GPX substitute.
Verify route directions, trail closures, bridge walkway hours, and the opening hours of every stamp church before walking.
09 · Approaching the route · Prayer and intention
A Franciscan route asks for attention rather than endurance.
It is the one mile of this route that cannot be replaced by any other mile. Wind, noise and the drop beneath are part of it.
Francis is not honoured by a pilgrimage that treats the people on the streets of his city as an inconvenience. The organizers named the works of mercy as part of the route for a reason.
The Porziuncola in North Beach and the Old Mission chapel are both small, and both are more important than the larger buildings beside them.
The Coast Miwok and Ramaytush Ohlone were here first, built both missions, and are buried at the end of the route. Praying for them belongs on this walk.
This is a route inspired by Francis, not a substitute for the place where he lived and is buried. Walking it well should make Assisi more desirable, not less.
10 · Sources and route notes · History, revival, and practical details
Historically documented
The Camino de San Francisco publishes the route, its sacred sites, the pilgrim passport and the certificates. The Archdiocese of San Francisco hosts the route directions. OSV News and the Archdiocese both reported the inaugural pilgrimage of February 2026 and named the organizers.
Revived and modern
This is not a revived route. It is a new one, and the organizers present it as such, inspired by the California mission trails rather than continuing any of them.
Details still being verified
Section mileage in the official materials does not add to the published total of about 24.56 miles, and two of the named sections cover overlapping ground. Treat the total as the reliable figure and the sections as geographic rather than measured. Stamp-church hours are published by each church and change.
My Journeys
Save Camino de San Francisco for inspiration, then gather the churches, shrines, saints, and sacred stops connected to it. My Journey keeps those places together while you plan.
Use this for corrections, broken links, missing places, and planning ideas.
