"God in Austria"---Introduction

I am so excited to start a post series about my semester in Austria.  I lived in Austria for four months as a student at Franciscan in Fall of 2010.  The Austria program at Franciscan is excellent   Unlike most other Universities, the study aboard program doesn't just send their students to another university for a semester but has created something more like a satellite campus two hours outside of Vienna with the kind of administration and teachers we are used to at a passionately Catholic university.

The place the students stay is a 14th century Carthusian monastery.   The story of how the program came to be is completely divine.  Fr. Mike Scanlan, the president of the University at the time, was looking for a place to send students to study abroad looking particularly in Assisi or Rome in order to dig deep roots in the Franciscan and Catholic tradition. Everything kept coming up short.  He was at a wedding, talking with someone and the man started talking about a architect he knew who had just finished restoring a 14th century Carthusian monastery.  He had plans for it to be a hotel in the summer but wanted a good Catholic school to use it during the school year.  Fr. Mike flew over and the rest is history.  For over 10 years about 100 students have been crossing the Atlantic ocean each semester to embark on a semester of adventures.

The monastery, affectionately known as the Kartause is gorgeous.

Yeap I lived there, for four months.  I know blessed.

Austria is known around here as such a time of spiritual growth and, well, alot of beer (when in Austria live as the Austrians do).  If you missed the video the first time, this video says so much about the experience for so many students.

Come back for the next part about my week in Ireland.

Live joy.