Rosary Crusades in America

Two bishops have called for Rosary Crusades in their respective dioceses in the month of August, asking Catholics to pray daily Rosaries for the end of the pandemic, for justice and peace, for an end to the desecration of churches, and for multiple other intentions.

“In our current time of crisis, our Church, world and our country need faith in God and the protection and intercession of Mary,” Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver (Colorado) said in an August 7th statement. “And so... I am launching a Rosary Crusade to ask Mary to urgently bring our needs to Jesus.”

Aquila invited all Catholics in his diocese to pray a daily Rosary, beginning on the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, Aug. 15th, through the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows on Sept. 15th. He asked that they pray for 15 distinct intentions, including for an end to the coronavirus pandemic and all those who have died of the virus, and end to abortion and euthanasia and attacks against life, as well as for peace, justice and an end to discrimination on the basis of race.

“We turn to Mary in our difficulty because she is our spiritual mother, who with her ‘yes’ to the Lord embraced the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power,” Aquila noted. Aquila said the inspiration for his Rosary Crusade came from Bishop Carl Kemme of Wichita (Kansas), who in July announced that he was starting a Rosary Crusade for the month of August in his diocese for similar intentions.

In his message to the Catholics of his diocese, Kemme said that while the pandemic, racial injustice, civil unrest and other upheavals America is experiencing this year may seem like these are “unprecedented times,” the Church and her members have experienced similar—and worse—sufferings throughout the ages.

“It has been said that we live in unprecedented times. But do we really?” Kemme wrote. “After all, any amateur student of history and especially Church history can attest that Holy Mother Church has already experienced everything we are living through and even far worse, things like plagues and pandemics, persecutions of Christians, violent attacks against persons for reason of color or other discriminatory traits, the shameless desecration of churches and statues and acts that cause scandal, even by those who are called to serve as leaders of the faith.”

In addition to a renewed commitment to the sacramental life, Kemme also invited his diocese to a month-long Rosary Crusade, because “the Rosary has been recommended to the faithful for centuries as a prayer of contemplation, a weapon against evil and a source of divine strength and consolation.”

Adapted from Catholic News Agency