By Eric Connolly

It is a pilgrimage, not a vacation.

Father Mark Lenneman, the Carroll College chaplain, made that abundantly clear to students preparing for 12 days in Italy–specifically, Assisi and Rome.

“Our trip was definitely a pilgrimage,” Father Lenneman said. “Pilgrimage is really a microcosm of the Christian walk.”

The 25 participants brought together in prayer for the May journey traveled in solidarity with another Carroll group traveling at the same time, to Guatemala for outreach to impoverished people. “One of the basic tenets of pilgrimage is that you never go on pilgrimage for yourself,” Father Lenneman said.

The group bound for Italy left Helena on May 11, landed in Rome and immediately headed off for four days in Assisi.

“In Assisi there’s such a powerful spirit of prayer,” Father Lenneman said. “The reality of the Gospel as Francis and Clare lived it, in poverty that’s not debilitating poverty, but poverty that is free.”

Carroll graduate Sean Courtney, the youth minister at St. Ann Parish in Butte, said that in Assisi the group was “full of blessings that we never could have expected.” They included the opportunity to experience the reality of St. Francis’ and St. Clare’s lives by walking in their footsteps, one student said.

“That is a huge step for us,” Father Lenneman said, “Sometimes we put saints on pedestals. They’re real people. They’re not any different from us except in their openness and reception to grace.”

After four days in Assisi, the group returned to Rome and visited the Vatican multiple times. Some of the students said that while at St. Peter’s Square and gathered around Pope Benedict XVI as a Carroll College flag waved, they experienced powerful emotions.

“There was this overwhelming swell of love, and tears just came with that,” Father Lenneman said. “And what I reflected back to them was this: That’s a sign that you are a good son or daughter for the Church because you have a love for the Holy Father, and you see it is family.”

He said the students “saw the beauty of the Church and also they experienced that they are the ones that make the Church beautiful by their faith, by their lives, by their prayer. That draws people to experience the Church in a deeper way.”


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 6, June 18, 2010.