Missionaries, writers and educationists, devoted to the service of their Armenian brethren wherever they might be found, such are these Benedictines of the Eastern Church. Their subjects usually enter the convent at an early age, eight or nine years old, receive in it their elementary schooling, spend about nine years in philosophical and theological study, at the canonical age of twenty-five, if sufficiently prepared, are ordained priests by their bishop-abbot, and are then employed by him in the various enterprises of the order. First, there is the work of the mission – not the conversion of the heathen, but priestly ministry to the Armenian communities settled in most of the commercial centres of Europe. With this is joined, where needed and possible, the apostolate of union with Rome. Next there is the education of the Armenian youth and, associated with this, the preparation and publication of good and useful Armenian literature.