Annual high school pilgrimage to Rome is the “story within the story”

Studying history can be daunting. Teaching history so it makes sense to students in the present day, can be just as challenging. Most of the time, a history teacher can only rely on a textbook or technology to help convey what really happened. Depending on how long ago a significant event in time took place, a resource with colorful words or photos may not exist or be enough to help tell the true story. Jerome Richter realized this firsthand back in 1995 as a senior at St. Mary’s High School when he first went to Italy to visit his brother Tom Richter in Rome, who was studying to be a priest. 
            
Once Richter became a history teacher at St. Mary’s in 2000, he had an epiphany of sorts. Instead of trying to bring the history of the Catholic Church to the students the traditional way, why not do what he did, and bring the students to Rome so they could experience the Eternal City with their own eyes and hearts. So, in 2001, the first, and to this day the only, annual North Dakota High School Rome pilgrimage began by Richter leading 30 students from St. Mary’s High School. 
            
“I wanted them to see that we all play a very significant role in history, but most importantly to see the Church in its fullness: to see the universality of our faith and to be able to touch and defend the very tangible historical markers of Sts. Peter and Paul and to be able to be in the presence of the Holy Father himself,” stated Richter, who has continued to lead this pilgrimage even in his current role as executive vice president and chief of staff at the University of Mary. “I want to show the students that they’re part of something much bigger than Bismarck or North Dakota, or even the United States. The pilgrimage gives them that experience of the blessings of their faith. They grow in confidence of who they are and what they’re called to be.” 
            
Since then, the annual pilgrimage’s popularity has grown significantly to now include a maximum of about 150 students from St. Mary’s Central High School, Bishop Ryan High School in Minot, Dickinson Trinity, Fargo Shanley, and Sacred Heart of East Grand Forks, Minn. 
            
While the number of students has changed since its inception, there’s one policy that will never change: students are not allowed to bring cell phones or any technology. That’s a significant rule this day and age, but especially during this year’s pilgrimage of 2024. Just days before they were to leave for Rome, Castletown Media asked Richter if they could have their cinematographer accompany the pilgrims for their documentary “Roadmap to Reality: Carlos Acutis and Our Digital Age.” Blessed Acutis is the young boy from Assisi, Italy, who will be canonized in 2025 after passing away in 2006. He used technology, albeit measuredly, to bring others closer to Christ. 
            
“The reason that Castletown Media wanted our pilgrimage to be the story within the story is because we’re not taking technology with, because Blessed Carlo Acutis knew that technology can be a distraction, and most people think of him as a computer geek and he’s not,” reminded Richter. “He would limit himself to one hour a week on any type of video game or computer game—10 minutes a day. And then he only used the website to promote what is good and true which was the Eucharistic miracles and bringing people together. So, this pilgrimage helps to write the storyline on Blessed Carlo Acutis that technology is great when it’s used for good things and when you need to come to know God you need to disconnect from it and be able to be in silence and listen.”
            
And listen they did as students visited holy site after holy site in Rome and other parts of Italy, including the historic town of Assisi, where Acutis’ tomb lies.
            
“Not having a phone allowed me to have way more meaningful and authentic conversations with my long-time friends, and those people that I just met,” said Isaac Beauchamp, a student at Shanley High School in Fargo. “After being in Rome, I didn’t want to go back to using my phone. It felt like I had finally been able to experience the world how it was supposed to be, without looking down at a screen every five minutes.”
           
“The fact that no one had their phone and we were forced to make conversation with anyone and everyone was a blast,” said Shanley student Haley Wilson. “I got to know my classmates better along with the Sacred Heart kids too, with long bus rides and many conversations. All the things I thought I would miss about technology did not even cross my mind. It was the best two weeks of my life, and I think having no technology played a role in that.”
 
“It seemed very providential but at the same time I wanted to make sure that the pilgrims were comfortable with it,” Richter recalled. “The students were fabulous and so having a professional cinematographer with us the whole time actually heightened the experience for the students. It is amazing that we are going to be in a movie about a saint and being part of telling his story. We are mimicking what he desired young people to do having no technology, listening to the voice of God, and also being together talking and visiting Eucharistic miracles. My main take away is God was very gracious to us this summer, showering us with all kinds of graces. In that I realized that this group of young people and this generation of young people truly desires to be good and to be great. They simply need to be challenged to do it.”

Just when this “story within the story” couldn’t get any more providential, the annual high school Rome pilgrimage has truly come full circle.
“This is now becoming something that is generational. The policies that stay the same with no technology—it was easy back in 2001 through 2006 because we didn’t have cell phones,” Richter said with a laugh. “But the other thing is this: two of the priests that were chaplains on this pilgrimage were roommates from two separate schools on the pilgrimage back during their senior year in 2013: Father Grant Dvorak and Father Jacob Magnusson—one from St Mary’s, one from Bishop Ryan, respectively. I made them room together. Both were well-respected young men and I thought if they could get along, life will be good. And now they are both priests as chaplains at our high schools and now leading other students to Rome, and I believe both of them would say: ‘without Rome and the pilgrimage, I wouldn’t have discerned the calling to the priesthood as clearly.’”

This North Dakota pilgrimage led by Richter just completed its 23^rd year—minus the COVID year. The journey has inspired other Catholic high schools across the region to begin their own pilgrimage. Catholic schools in Minnesota and South Dakota have reached out to Richter for guidance and support in hopes that they too can create a long-lasting annual tradition that allows high school pilgrims to travel to their classroom in Rome to search for truth, perhaps hear God’s calling, and better understand the history of their Catholic faith.