HPU students travel to Rome for Vatican moment

A group of 17 High Point University students traveled 4,700 miles to Rome and Vatican City for a close-up look at the machinery behind a Vatican moment, a trip that also put a Guilford County campus inside one of the world’s most watched religious settings.

HPU said the students were traveling as part of its Maymester program, with Dr. Brandon Lenoir, an associate professor of strategic communication, leading the group. The university said the students were getting a behind-the-scenes look at the Vatican’s media offices, a detail that fits a trip built around more than sightseeing.

That media focus matters. The Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication oversees the Holy See’s communication system, Vatican News describes itself as the official news portal of the Holy See, and the Holy See Press Office publishes the daily bulletin with official news of the Holy Father and other Holy See departments. For communication students, that makes Vatican City more than a place of religious symbolism. It is also a working global media center.

HPU has framed its pilgrimage experiences as something different from a standard mission trip. The university says the programs are designed to deepen spiritual formation and help students better understand the intersections of faith, history, culture and politics. HPU also says the pilgrimages are offered in both fall and spring, with the 2026 spring pilgrimage page listing San Antonio, Texas. Past pilgrimage destinations have included Italy, Greece, Asheville, Haiti, New York City, Houston, Mepkin Abbey and Charleston, the Camino de Santiago, Christ in the Desert Monastery and the Piedmont Triad.

The Rome trip follows a similar HPU Italy pilgrimage in March 2025, when 20 students traveled during spring break and visited Milan, Pavia, Florence, Siena, Assisi and Rome during the Catholic Year of Jubilee, which comes every 25 years in the Catholic Church. That trip was accompanied by Rev. Dr. Preston Davis, Dr. Christopher Franks and Gwenn Noel, and HPU said donors and partners including the HPU Chapel, Student Government Association and the Hayworth Foundation helped subsidize the experience so students paid only a fraction of the cost.

HPU said its 2025 Maymester and Global Experience programs sent a record number of students and faculty abroad, with the first departures on May 4 and destinations including Italy, France and Scotland. The Vatican trip extends that pattern, giving High Point students access to a high-profile global setting while reinforcing how the university packages international travel as part of its academic identity.