In Austria, no one skips Experience 101. In 1991 about 100 students temporarily traded the hilltop campus of Franciscan University in Steubenville for the school's new campus at the base of the Austrian Alps. Since then, close to 1,500 have been similarly transformed.
Students show up here every semester open to all the stimulation of being in Europe.
The first experience almost everyone mentions is the pervasive holiness of the monastery itself. The current occupants hope to leave behind a holy residue of their own in the beautifully restored monastery that is once again becoming an international center for Catholic learning . I knew about the Byzantine Church, but I didn't understand how it all fit. Living with him and going with him to Romania for the Byzantine Easter gave me a hands-on experience of that church. To my knowledge, this is the only foreign study program that incorporates students from 15 or 20 different countries into a community with a common bond of language and faith.