Humanities Rome Program
The Humanities Rome Program is a complement to the Humanities course that students take in the Fourth Form year, which focuses on interdisciplinary grounding in the language, literature, history, and thought of the West from Augustine in the late fourth century to the present. Students apply in the spring of their Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth form years.
Selected students take part in this communal pilgrimage for two weeks, living in modest European-style accommodations at a convent in the oldest part of Rome. Excursions include tours throughout Rome of major basilicas, a descent into the excavations below St. Peter's, a Wednesday general audience with the Pope, the Vatican Museum, and extend to various sites outside the city, such as the monastery of St. Benedict at Subiaco, Assisi, and Ostia Antica. Learn more here.
Salamanca, Spain, Summer Study
Founded in 1984, the Summer Study Program in Salamanca offers the opportunity to develop or improve Spanish skills in an unparalleled setting. For four weeks, students are immersed fully in the Spanish language and culture and earn up to 9 college credits by taking courses with language professors and native Spanish speakers. Students attend classes throughout the week, and participate in excursions around Spain and cultural activities on the weekends. Students may reside with a host family or in a dormitory. Learn more here.
Lourdes Pilgrimages
Every year Abbey students are in the privileged position to have two opportunities to travel to Lourdes, France, to volunteer in helping the pilgrims, or malades, who seek healing to fully benefit from their time in this historic and holy place. The students also have the chance to savor the day-to-day life of the town, and enjoy their own spiritual retreat.
On one of the pilgrimages, Hugh Markey '40 sponsors, as he has done for decades, four students to go with Ampleforth Abbey in England on a week-long trip that has been taking place for over a century. Since the mid-1990s, Joe Michaud '90 has organized and led the Portsmouth Abbey students each year.
On the other pilgrimage, led for nearly two decades by Dom Joseph Byron, another group of Portsmouth Abbey School students travel, work and pray with students from Canterbury School and members of the Knights of Malta. This pilgrimage is currently organized by Mrs. Hope Carter, mother of Charles E. '82 and George E. '85 Carter.
Every year the volunteer activities at Lourdes change, and so the experience is a very individual one, varying from year to year, pilgrimage from pilgrimage, and person to person. This could mean meeting the malades at the train station, helping them into rickshaws, transporting them to the Holy Shrines, and offering assistance as needed. Read more.
World Youth Day
World Youth Day is actually a week-long event for young people from around the globe to gather and celebrate their Catholic faith. Initiated in 1985 by Pope John Paul II, the celebration takes place in a different location every few years and attracts hundreds of thousands of youth. A group of students and teachers from Portsmouth Abbey attended for the first time in 2011 when the event was held in Madrid, Spain. The next event will be held in 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Read more about the 2011 World Youth Day.
2013 Prague Visual Arts Trip
Portsmouth Abbey's newest summer enrichment excursion, a trip to Prague in the Czech Republic, will take place for the first time in the summer of 2013. The trip will be approximately 8-10 days.
The trip will be led by Visual Arts Department Head Joney Swift and will include a number of historic, literary, and artful sights; very affordable concerts at night of both classical and contemporary music; and an art treasure hunt of Prague. There will be ample time to enjoy shopping and the delicious traditional foods of the Czech Republic. Other activities will include architectural and landscape drawing sessions and photography in the early morning and evening light. Read more.
