Confraternity of the Rosary

I

would be remiss if I didn't say when you're talking about community, I would encourage your listeners to find out about and to join the Rosary Confraternity.

You can go to rosaryshrine.co.uk, for example, drop down menu from shrine and you'll see confraternity.

because the rosary confraternity is about community it's a it's a spiritual communion that unites all of us throughout the world who love the rosary and who just make a very simple commitment of praying 15 decades of the rosary a week and it doesn't cost anything it's totally free to join and you become part of the larger dominican family and you receive you know the prayers of hundreds of thousands around the world who are praying for your intentions and as you pray your rosary every week you pray for their intentions and i think that is you know that really the first idea of community is this communion of love we're bound together by love for god love for mary love for the rosary and we love one another by praying for one another and i think the example you just gave is a very beautiful concrete expression of that And I would encourage all listeners to check out the Rosary Confraternity and to join.

You can just do it online.

It doesn't take much time at all.

Folks around the CUA community will know that they had a rosary pilgrimage at the Basilica, I want to say, one or two years ago.

But they're going to have one in Portland, actually, and the Rosary Confraternity is working with us to promote that.

Yeah.

It's a couple of examples of some of the things we're excited to work on right now.

It kind of gets forgotten for a bit until around 1450, when our Blessed Mother and our Lord appear to another Dominican, Blessed Alan de la Roche, up in Brittany.

And because St. Dominic founded the Confraternity of the Rosary up in Brittany, our Blessed Mother wanted the revival of the Rosary to come from that same area and get the confraternities going again.

So Blessed Alan de la Roche is sort of, you could say, the second originator or the second, um, great promoter of the Rosary.

Also a Dominican, a good priest.

And this is really fascinating.

okay uh the highlights from bartolo longo's life his conversion happened while he was not only studying law but he dedicated his life to promoting the rosary while viewing it as a spiritual weapon against evil he is best known for founding the pontifical shrine of our lady of the rosary of pompeii in italy He restored it and the dilapidated church, and he established a Confraternity of the Rosary and built this shrine into a major, major international pilgrimage site.

Over 1.5 million pilgrims come and see the Shrine of Pompeii.

The arrival in the Valley of Pompeii when he started in 1872 was a marshy, malaria-ridden, impoverished area.

So the question is, are we Rosarians? I've never heard that before.

He

started the confraternity of the Rosary, so they were called Rosarians.

Rosarians, I like that.

So we haven't even, even mentioned it yet, but the church has already got a rosary club.

It's called the Rosary Confraternity, right?

[laughs]

It's run by the Dominicans.

It's the official club of the rosary, and the only requirement is that you commit to praying 15 total decades of the rosary every week.

I th- you know, there are a lot of people who already do that, some people who do that every day, and you pray, pray in communion.

When you're, when you join this, you are praying in communion with all the members of the Rosary Confraternity, and that includes the members who have long since passed away, right? So this, this Rosary Confraternity has been going on since the 1400s.

So there's a lot of grace built up in the rosary.