Minds opened to the world 

When Bernard Mambo, a French teacher at St. John’s Catholic Prep in Buckeystown, travels with high school students abroad, he carries his “big book” with him at all times. Filled with medical records, dietary concerns, notarized permission slips and other details about everyone on the trip, the book – really a large binder – helps him know exactly what to do should a situation arise, he said. 

He does know one thing for certain about each student; international travel, he said, “literally changes” their lives. 

“They just grow up like crazy,” Mambo said. “They can see the world is not just St. John’s . It is more than that.” 

Since 2023, Mambo has taken four trips abroad with students; traveling through Italy, France and Spain the first year, and visiting Italy and Greece in 2024. In 2025, students traveled to Japan and South Korea and this summer, a group of 21 students visited Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and France. 

“Way back when they needed a chaperone, I would go,”  Mambo explained of how he got involved with the trips. “At one point, they kind of stopped.” 

When he heard alumni say the best times they had at St. John’s was during the trips abroad, he spoke to St. John’s head of school to get approval to start offering trips again. He then contacted EF Educational Tours, a company that specializes in educational trips for students and teachers, received their official training and took his first group of students abroad. 

“It is good for the school,” Mambo said, adding that while the trips used to be considered “Dr. Mambo’s thing,” the principal told him the trips made St. John’s “stand out as something different.” 

“I really appreciated that,” Mambo said. 

Ten students at Loyola Blakefield in Towson were able to take part in the first of two pilot years of the Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (AMDG) program, a year-long immersion and faith exploration experience affiliated with Boston College. The goal is “to promote the renewal and expansion of faith practices” according to Boston College’s website. The Jesuit college received a $10 million grant from Lilly Endowment’s National Youth and Young Adult Initiative on Faith and Service to fund the two-year program, which had students from 15 Jesuit high schools, five colleges and five parishes attend Boston College’s Ever to Excel program in the summer of 2025 followed by a silent retreat in Louisiana in the fall and ending with a pilgrimage to the Camino Ignaciano in Spain in July. 

“For us, it is important to show our students an experience of the wider world,” said Louis W. Charest, Loyola Blakefield’s director of Ignatian Mission and Identity. “We want them to know they are part of something much bigger.” 

The pilgrimage to Spain, he said, put the students out in nature, hiking 12 to 14 miles a day following the path St. Ignatius Loyola took in 1522 from Loyola to Manresa. 

“I had never been to Europe or anywhere,” Tucker DeVack, a rising senior at Loyola Blakefield, said. “It was amazing to experience the spiritual aspects in all the historical spots, to see the history of the saint we hold close to our hearts.” 

Brady Dendinger, another rising senior at Loyola Blakefield, said the experience allowed him “to get closer to God and closer to my faith.” 

“It helped me along my faith journey, to enjoy the nature God created and appreciate my life,” Dendinger said. 

While all expenses were paid for the 10 students participating in the AMDG program, most trips cost about $4,000, according to Mambo. He is working with fellow teachers at St. John’s on fundraising ideas to provide scholarships. 

“This is the biggest issue,” Mambo said, “raising money for scholarships, even if partial or full, for kids who can not afford to go.” 

Students returning from trips abroad with Mambo share their experiences with other students and at planning nights for parents and students for the next year’s trip. Charest said the rising seniors are already sharing their journeys with their friends and the next group of students in the AMDG program. 

“Most people won’t have experiences like this,” Charest said. “For them to do it at 17 years old. I’m so proud of the students. It was really the students’ spiritual growth that was most enriching and stayed with me.”  

Email Katie V. Jones at kjones@CatholicReview.org 

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