On Monday, the feast day of Mary Magdalene, Elizabeth Schrader planned to hike up a mountain in the south of France to the cave where, legend has it, the saint lived out her remaining days after the crucifixion of Jesus.
It was to be Schrader’s fourth trek to the cave, in the town of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, an hour’s drive from Marseille, but her first on the actual feast day, decreed by Pope Francis in 2016. Even before the decree, the day had long drawn pilgrims who go through the streets of Saint-Maximin with the purported skull of Mary Magdalene in a golden reliquary.