Florida's Arthur Blessitt has achieved his long-cherished ambition to carry a cross to every nation on earth.
Blessitt, aged 57, has just returned to the United States, having completed on Sept. 1 a walk in North Korea, carrying his 12-foot-high cross. North Korea was the last of the countries and territories he needed to visit to complete his world pilgrimage.Blessitt began his pilgrimage in response to what he describes as a call from God in 1969. Since then he has walked 32,580 miles in 277 countries, island groups and territories. In the course of his pilgrimage, he has faced a firing squad, has been arrested 24 times, has traveled through 49 countries at war, and has walked with 70,000 people across Poland. Billy Graham has walked with him, Pope John Paul II has welcomed him to Rome, and Yasser Arafat has welcomed him to Beirut. Since 1990 when he married, his wife Denise, from England, accompanies him on all his trips.