The Remarkable Adventure of a Man from Marbella to Have an Audience with the Pope

Adrián Ruiz, from Marbella, has walked 3,000 kilometers to have an audience with Pope Leo XIV at The Vatican, an experience in which he traveled without money and accompanied only by a blessed cypress tree, which will be planted in Santo Toribio de Liébana (Cantabria) as a “symbol of unity of the lands.”

The adventure is part of his personal project Un camino por descubrir, a demonstration of faith during which he has been recording since April last year with a “hidden camera” the “kindness” of the people he meets during his pilgrimage to Italy, later uploading it to social media. “It's about capturing the good deeds of people and what I do is capture that spontaneity, to truly show the heart they have,” he says.

The original idea was to depart from Marbella to Sicily by sailboat with his friend Andrea Martelo, with whom he had a similar experience in 2019 to highlight rural and depopulated Spain, embarking on a journey from Marbella to the Franciscan Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana, which houses the Lignum crucis, the “largest piece of the Cross of Christ”. Plans eventually changed, and Adrián had to fly from Málaga to Palermo, from where he began his pilgrimage on foot, accompanied for 20 days by another friend, Salvador.

In that first trip, he tells how he was given “seeds of Jerusalem cypress” after it was known that he planned to go to the Vatican, which have also been blessed and will be planted in Marbella and Covadonga (Asturias). Once in Sicily, and after the death of Pope Francis on April 21, 2025, with whom he claims to have had “an audience scheduled”; he waited on the island “for the conclave and all the new Pope's protocol, and I made a journey that was truly spiritual.”

Crossing the Strait of Messina on a paddleboard

One of the most striking feats was when Ruiz resumed his journey to Rome on August 20, crossing the Strait of Messina on a paddleboard because “I cannot take any means of motorized transport, I have to go on foot,” in “international waters where many cruise ships pass, the seas are dangerous and there are tides and whirlpools in the middle.” He was able to do this thanks to people he met in the area, who “worked in the Coast Guard.”

His pilgrimage continued through Calabria or Naples until reaching Rome on December 24, surviving on the “kindness” and “help” of people he meets or contacts him through social media: “I go without money and without taking any, and without hitchhiking. They always offer me money and I never accept it,” the pilgrim recounted, expressing his “happiness” for people's response. “I go to a café, ask for bread and water, just the basics, and they give you a pizza, cola, a beer, and everything.”

The modus operandi is simple: “I humble myself a bit to capture the essence of each person, so this has a very simple but strong message, because what I seek is to have those emotions.” “Meeting people for me is the most beautiful part of this trip, because in the end the project is about the people, it has created a family and they are happy moments,” he points out. “The first city was Palermo and we asked for rice, we had a camping gas,” commented the man from Marbella, noting that “gradually you gain confidence and security, although it's naturally embarrassing but once you know a language, we learned in the translator the things we had to say perfectly and then you lose it.”

On January 6, he was already in Rome “for the closure of the Jubilee Year” and on the 7th he was able to have an audience with Pope Leo XIV, an experience he describes as “incredible”, in which he told the Holy Father about his project: “I brought a plant with me which he blessed as a way to unite the two sacred places, which are the Vatican and Santo Toribio de Liébana,” he has reported. Traveling with a cypress in a pot “has been incredible”, as well as “exhausting”, requiring the plant to be “cared for” and to be “next to the backpack”. “It crossed the Strait with me, the soil would fall out, I would put it back, a whole odyssey what it has lived through.”

His adventure continued in San Francisco de Asís, where he venerated the remains of the religious figure, which will be displayed in the Basilica on the 800th anniversary of his death. And this “after fasting for 19 days from Rome with the promise of seeing the Pope”, during which he “ate nothing, walking and only drinking water, lemon, and salt”. The adventure continues these days in Perugia, where he has been hosted by some followers and from where he will depart to Tuscany. The spiritual journey will conclude in Venice on May 1 to return to Spain, after covering 5,000 kilometers.