TVP WEEKLY: You walked millions of steps, it's good for your health, Forrest Gump also ran for his health. But in the process, you left quite a carbon footprint - the plane journey to America, the people helping out en route who consumed fuel, and you personally, burning twigs in your kettle, did a disservice to the planet and humanity. What's the point of walking, wouldn't it be better to jog around the house?

ROMAN ZIĘBA: One of the first famous Americans, the indefatigable walker Henry David Thoreau [American writer and philosopher - ed], wrote extensively about the benefits of walking. He was of the opinion that through the natural activity of walking, man could discover deep, perhaps now forgotten truths hidden in the world and within himself.

Still from my unfinished medical studies, I remember the perfect structure of the three joints: the ankle, the knee and the hip. The mastery of these structures indicates that walking in an upright posture was one of the first characteristics of man, a creature different from animals because it had dreams and a purpose. Today, we assume that this happened in the savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa about 2 million years ago. From there, man embarked on his journey to the ends of the world. The upright posture freed our ancestors' hands. They could now make tools, draw with ochre in caves and then build cathedrals, design nuclear weapons and take selfies.

Today, we are probably all asking ourselves: where has the trek led us and what have we done with our big dreams. In the 21st century, we sit in front of a computer to then run on a stationary treadmill. But this is not the same as a simple, long-distance walk, like the one from our early days, when the road had a real purpose, because it was used to find food and colonise new lands, to discover the secrets of the world.

Today it looks as if we have reached the end of the line: we have everything in excess, peaks conquered, the world explained and described, so we invent ever more bizarre entertainments as it becomes harder and harder to make sense of things. The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the social upheavals show that satiety was an illusion. My walk is probably some kind of longing for the meaning of our primordial origins, when nothing was easy or obvious.

In the experience of ordinary tiredness, hunger and thirst, a feeling of gratitude for the simplest things is awakened. Inhabitants of large metropolises have forgotten what water tastes like and do not know the sight of a starry sky. Meanwhile, the true taste of water can be discovered on the road through the desert. This is also where the stars shine brightest.

You seem to have travelled alone, but you have received a great deal of support from various people, including material support. Since you are on a pilgrimage in the name of faith, perhaps it would be better to donate this money to a fund for victims of priests, for example? Or a new iPad for the editor of "Krytyka Polityczna", who calls for universal justice?

I used to work for a corporation in Poland, specifically IBM. I was in charge of, among other things, IT system implementations, process optimisation, risk management, all that ergonomics of success. Those were the days before my conversion. Raised in an atheist family, I didn't know prayers or any religious practices.

Among business consultants and IT specialists, we were then having a somewhat perverse discussion on the topic: "Is there any technology that has changed people's lives qualitatively rather than just quantitatively?". On the face of it, the question is absurd, because after all we have life-saving antibiotics, organ transplants or even a lift for the disabled. But yet, when you look at these inventions, you see that they improve quantitative parameters: life expectancy, travel time, etc.

It has come to the point where, in order to talk about improving quality of life, you have to get into the area of values. And with this, business is having trouble. Because even such seemingly noble CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) hides a clever branding scheme. The Church, which from its inception has been heavenward looking and concerned with evangelical justice, feels similar pressure from the world today. And what does it deal with today? A growing number of communities would be happy to make it some kind of spiritual agenda of the United Nations with a focus on social or political justice.

Who today is seriously interested in the salvation of the soul? Because the obvious object of order for the growing majority is a longer life, less suffering, worry and uncertainty.

190 days on foot through the roads and wilderness of America, as you wrote, is "the prayer of a million steps". You set out with $150 in your pocket and a notebook with a list of intentions for which you were hiking. On the road you often heard the question, "why?", why are you walking?". Why did you agonise like this for six months?

I heard the question "but why?" very often. To give an honest answer to it, I had to answer it honestly myself first. It may be strange, but I am more of a homebody type. I used to greatly value home, stability, relationships with loved ones. When I lost all this in a brutal way, I set out on an unprotected path, probably to strip myself of the illusion.

By putting myself in a situation of uncertainty during the hike, I wanted to kill the lie in me with which I was hurting myself and my loved ones. I felt that this lie was ingrained in me, that at successive confessions I was a repeat offender of the same sins. As I set off on a new pilgrimage each year, I longed to finally touch my 'centre', the place that Thomas Merton [French-born American Trappist monk and writer - ed.] called 'le point vierge', the point of freedom. I still believe that this is possible here on earth.

The Way is my way of talking to God. Speaking in the language of the icon, I identified this point with the perfect model, the image of God that He has deposited in each of us. Perhaps I am led by the hope that I will eventually reach my home. The real one. I know that I'm balancing on the edge of hubris, that perhaps I've placed the goal especially too high for myself, and that the pilgrimage is a great candidate for an idol.

Passing through the USA along two routes that formed the sign of the cross on the map [in addition to Roman, another route from Canada into Mexico was followed by Wojciech, the roads intersecting near Denver to form a symbolic cross - ed.] was the thirteenth major pilgrimage of our community. I know it may look like a romantic escapade, but, as Thoreau wrote: "What to some seems a frivolous tramp, to the wanderer may be the shouldering of real responsibility".

We move to give thanks that we have been given a new chance after a drastic fall and to 'pray in steps for ourselves and others'. It is a prayer without words that cannot be talked through, but we believe it can be heard in heaven.

Let's go back to the reaction of ordinary people in the USA, for whom it must have been a shock that someone would want to walk so far. If only on a bicycle or motorbike... After all, as you yourself write in your book "Cross of America. A Diary of a Journey Across the Continent on Foot", the United States is a country where even "two hundred metres to the shop are covered by car".

A pedestrian pushing a pram through a country of drivers and large spaces first arouses suspicion and association with homelessness, and after a while curiosity and a desire to hear the story: from where, to where and why. Perhaps this contrast between the slow pace of individual steps and the fast world of technicised pragmatism opened up a space for a unique encounter, where both sides appeared to need each other?

Americans, who have freedom 'written into their genotype', sensed that I did not have a credit card in my wallet, that I was not an extreme hiker or survival coach. That is why they helped. They not only wanted to give shelter, feed or support financially, but I sensed that in some way they wanted to become part of this pilgrimage.

Sometimes the conversation turned into mutual testimony. We were then united by our belief in a common ideal, the greatest of human dreams. Today, I believe that the confessions of the people I met, often intimate, were the greatest treasure I received on the road. These stories made up the picture of America that I later tried to reflect in the book.

America looks very different from a hiking perspective. Great spaces, but also poverty, abandonment, marginalized people. Everywhere, however, you encountered expressions of human solidarity and kindness. Your descriptions of encounters with immigrants and Indians are particularly striking.

America is a country of great contrasts. On a walking tour, they become all the more apparent. In California, for example, several hundred thousand millionaires live next to 120,000 homeless people. The wealth of Silicon Valley neighbours the poverty of immigrant neighbourhoods. In affluent Denver, I saw a city of tents along the river in the city centre. Not to mention Chicago's West Side, or the ghost towns in the Rust Belt.

But it was with simple people, the poor, the homeless or those experiencing suffering or loss, that I made contact most quickly. They were the most willing to help. Maybe because we were quite similar. The child's pram I was pushing, my clothes faded by the sun, showed that I was coming from a distance and that I was carrying a burden, that I was struggling with something.

Together, I and they formed a strange community of difficult life experiences, some helplessness in the face of fate, but also hope that there was a solution for us, some good future. America is a country built on the dream of a better, fulfilled life.

Indians on reserves, on the other hand, do not open up easily to white newcomers. The traumas of history are still alive. Each time, however, a coincidence helped us to strike up a conversation. Once it was an eagle soaring over the prairie, another time it was a Polish friend with whom my interviewee had once served in Iraq.

This is the thirteenth such walking pilgrimage for you. You have already walked from the Holy Land and from Ireland to Poland. You hiked to Moscow, and a dog came with you from a pilgrimage through Turkey. There's even a documentary film of a pilgrimage with the painting "Jesus, I Trust in You" from Łódź to Rome: you were accompanied by former prisoners, there was a lot of emotion, and there were sparks between you right up to the gates of the Vatican.

From the first pilgrimage in 2011, over the following years, people after convictions, recovering from addictions, who had experienced extreme powerlessness in their lives, but it was in this impotence that they discovered light and felt hope, joined our pilgrimage community. There were even two documentaries made about that journey in 2016, when four former prisoners pushed a car-sized trolley from Poland to the Vatican.

It was an extraordinary pilgrimage. Our vehicle developed speeds of up to 5 km per hour. We walked to give thanks and blessings, without secured funds or accommodation, through 6 countries, including the mountains of Bosnia, tunnels in the Italian Apennines. In rain and parched weather, often stopped by police who could not assign our vehicle to any category in the traffic code, so we always made it.

Finally, Pope Francis sent this image of ours to Egypt, where it was introduced into the Cairo Cathedral as a sign of prayer for peace in the Middle East. This made it clear to us that the pilgrimages we go on are not just our personal ideas, but that they are part of the Church's mission. Moreover, we never go without the blessing of our bishop. After what each of us Divine Mercy Pilgrims has on our CVs, obedience is crucial for us today.

Let's go back to the beginning of this story. You are a happy husband and father, you have an excellent job in a multinational corporation, beautiful memories of travelling in the oriental world and suddenly you hear a banging on the door. The next image is a group of anti-terrorists throwing you to the ground....

At a large American technology company, I'm in charge of risk training, I'm responsible for project management, goal definition, I'm an expert on the 'mechanics of success' and suddenly, without warning, the iron bar of a prison cell slams behind me. The career, the plans, the dreams, all the control over reality I thought I had, suddenly collapses. I go from being an expert at success to an example of failure.

You will end up in custody. What was it like there? Did they beat you? Did they rape?

I didn't face the worst of it, but I witnessed drastic scenes a few times. I had to adapt quickly to the prison rules. Surprisingly, I was treated with respect by the prisoners from the beginning, because I had a good "whitewash" [in criminal slang: documents containing, among other things, the reason for being in custody or in prison - ed.] which is a paragraph: organised crime group. This commands respect. International smuggling, weapons, I'm facing a big sentence. I cannot show that I am broken. Later, I found out that the investigators were convinced that my work in the corporation was just a cover-up, that I was still coordinating the illegal business in Asia [Zięba years ago, after his medical studies had been interrupted, was active in the Far East for several years in a criminal group involved in smuggling gold, money and people into the US - ed.]

In prison I learn of my wife's terminal illness. I feel myself flying head down into bottomless darkness. As I sit with the grifters in a 12-bed cell, five television sets show the same scenes: the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center. The old world order is collapsing, and at the same time my whole life is being turned to ruin.

You lose everything. A family. A job. Your whole life so far. But you write in the book that there in the cell, in the midst of hopelessness, you saw a "little light".

In my cell, I read the Bible. In Genesis I discover the description of the creation of man from dust. After being released, I know for sure that I don't want to live my life the way I used to. I have nothing to go back to anyway. I have no moral right to practise as a success specialist. I feel disgusted by business, by new technologies. I am repulsed by a world ruled by deception and manipulation for profit.

I am a typical neophyte who carries a Bible under one arm, the works of John of the Cross under the other [Catholic saint, monk, Carmelite, mystic, one of Spain's greatest poets - ed.] and wants to sleep on the ground, like St Francis. Immediately after my release, I sign up for a pilgrimage during which prisoners on furlough push wheelchairs with the disabled. It is supposed to be difficult, it is supposed to hurt. I imagine that this is the only way I can destroy the lie I feel inside me all the time, the one that is clinging to me from the inside.

I make the confession of my life to the prison chaplain. For the first time, I am not ashamed of my tears in front of a man.

Can a neophyte, proud of his new path in life, find the virtue of humility? The prayer of steps is perhaps the most humbling one. It cannot be overplayed. When you set out on a journey with an intention, then there is no way out: you have to complete the sacrifice of hardship. You simply have to reach your destination.

Then, of course, all hell comes out to greet you. But when you know that you have discerned well that this path is needed, then in crises you clench your rosary tighter and again the individual steps add up to thousands. You know that God is near and that it is He who enables.

Concluding your pilgrimage at the former World Trade Center, destroyed in the 11 September 2011 attack, you wrote: "We make the most important decisions when we are stretched out on the cross (...) In cosmic loneliness and in the greatest suffering, even if we have never been free before, we are now at last truly free to choose: truth or falsehood, light or darkness, life or death. One of two ways: the villain on the right or the villain on the left. Eternal fear or eternal love."

Freedom of choice... God gives it to each one of us. It is a great, incomprehensible treasure. But in order to receive it, one must first make room for it. The journey to which Jesus invites us is a journey of surrendering all the excess baggage we accumulate in life and which we think is necessary for us.

Our lives most often look like the garage of a typical American home. Everything is there, all sorts of junk put away for years. I remember being surprised that Americans keep their cars in front of the house, almost never in the garage. There is simply no room there.

You used to do well in business. Now you go on pilgrimages and paint icons. I'm sure it gives you spiritual satisfaction, but let's come down to earth - how do you live from that?

I remember the moment when I returned from a pilgrimage through Russia. In the deafening silence of the Russian steppe, I felt that the only way to the emptiness was through a prayer of surrender of everything. There it came to me how small a crumb I am in the depths of the cosmos and how much the Creator of the Universe cares about me. The constant prayer of the steps transported me into another dimension.

After returning to Poland, I found it hard to return to the world. I talked to Wojtek about whether it was possible to live this spirit of the way in normal everyday life, which manifests itself in the solitary way with the rosary. In fact, I am constantly looking for an answer to this question. I believe that there is a kind of deepest spirituality that is not hindered by the fulfilment of everyday duties.

Today I make my living from icons. I make works on board and polychromes for temples. I also run icon writing workshops. I do not advertise. I practically do not seek clients. Whispered advertising works: some people recommend me to others.

The frenzy is not there, but what is meant to come, comes. In "Swallow in the Cathedral", the new book I'm working on, the titular swallow is a bird that flies from the ceiling and sings during mass in African churches. I was writing a large icon of the Holy Trinity on the altar wall of a church near Kibeho in Rwanda.

These birds are great migrants. Twice a year they travel the murderous distance from northern Europe all the way to sub-Saharan Africa. "Swallow in the Cathedral" is not only a reverie of pilgrimage, but a search for the answer to the question of the icon. How, by remaining silent, it is able to convey so much.

I wonder where you will go next. Ukraine? Maybe Mariupol - after all, it's a city dedicated to Mary - although probably only after liberation by the Ukrainians would such a pilgrimage be possible.

I discussed this with Sergey, my icon teacher, who is Ukrainian and lives near Lviv. He strongly advised me against hiking through Ukraine at this time: "They shoot everyone there. You won't have time to explain who you are." I don't know. Maybe I gave up too soon.

I am not comparing myself to St Francis, but he did not hesitate to go to what was then Mariupol, which was Egypt's Damietta with a large camp of Crusaders preparing to clash with the great enemy, Sultan Malik al-Kamil.

Having failed to obtain the consent of the papal legate, Francis decided on his own responsibility, without weapons, to break through to the Muslim side. The Muslims were surprised by the courage of the barefoot monk, so they took him before the Sultan. My conviction is that Francis did not want to convert him. He was going to share his greatest treasure out of love. When you love, death has no access to you.

– interviewed by Paweł Burdzy
-translated by Tomasz Krzyżanowski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists