By Joseph Pronechen
National Catholic Register
Before the beatification Mass for Fulton Sheen begins on Sept. 24, everyone attending the morning program at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis will receive a free “World Missions Rosary” — designed by Bishop Sheen himself. Thousands of faithful will then pray with this rosary.
That prayerful moment will harken back to 1951, when Sheen introduced the distinctive, multicolored, eye-catching rosary to remind the faithful to pray to Our Lady, Queen of Apostles, for the success of the Church’s missionary efforts around the world.
“Seventy-five years ago this year, Fulton J. Sheen, in his second year as the national director of The Pontifical Mission Societies, started to ask, ‘How can I get people praying for the missions?’ He knew Americans’ great love for Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, and their great love for the Holy Rosary,” today’s national director, Msgr. Roger Landry, told the National Catholic Register.
What a start to beatification day this will be for the more than 75,000 people expected to come to St. Louis and Peoria, Ill., to celebrate Sheen’s beatification.
Msgr. Landy explained to listeners when he appeared on Conversations with Consequences on EWTN Radio that the Diocese of Peoria “absolutely wanted” to have this rosary prayed to prepare for the beatification Mass of Fulton J. Sheen, “right before everybody processes on in, so that we can unite ourselves around Mary and pray for the Church throughout the world.”
But the challenge of providing 75,000 World Mission Rosaries for free is daunting. Because supply of the unique-looking rosary is limited and the cost to meet those numbers is prohibitive, The Pontifical Mission Societies began asking nuns, groups and individuals to make the rosaries for Sheen’s beatification.
And people are responding. “The women religious across the U.S. have been incredibly generous in committing each to make 1,000 rosaries,” Msgr. Landry said of the many convents now participating, as well as other groups, families and individuals
This groundswell began with Dominican Sister Jude Andrew Link of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, at their convent in Peoria. Sister Jude Andrew is director of programing and planning for the Diocese of Peoria’s morning event “Celebrate Sheen” leading up to the beatification, with speakers talking about Sheen, all pointing to Christ.
“We all knew we wanted to pray the World Mission Rosary that Fulton Sheen designed,” Sister Jude Andrew told the National Catholic Register. “The World Mission Rosaries are common in the Diocese of Peoria because of the devotion to Sheen.” She herself has one and said she “knew about it from my childhood.”
The rosary is made with the beads of each decade in a different color. Green symbolizes the forests and grasslands of Africa. Blue is for the ocean surrounding the Pacific Islands. White symbolizes Europe, home of the Holy Father, shepherd of the world. Red shows the fire of faith that brought the first missionaries to the Americas, and Yellow is for the morning light of the East, symbolizing Asia. To pray the World Mission Rosary, one reflects on each area of the world according to the particular color described at the time each Mystery is announced.
Sister Jude Andrew’s inspired rosary-making idea came to her as she was walking across the parking lot after morning Mass. She pulled her World Mission Rosary out of her pocket and told the sister with her, “I want 70,000 of these because I want everyone at the beatification to have it,” she said. “I knew that Msgr. Landry was also thinking about that. But very few people make these.”
In her convent, a sister told her she “could make a thousand by September. And that’s when it dawned on me that religious women all over the country know how to make these rosaries. If we could get in contact with convents of sisters and nuns across the country, we could easily get 70,000 rosaries.”
Sister Jude Andrew shared the idea with Msgr. Landry.
“We invited religious houses all across the country ... over 40 convents of sisters and nuns,” she said. “The response has been overwhelming.
The warmth and the generosity of the sisters, and especially the cloistered nuns, has just been beautiful and amazing.”
They also expanded the call, inviting rosary guilds and individual laymen and women making rosaries on their own to join the effort. Such a challenge was nothing new to Sister Mary Guadalupe of the School Sisters of Christ the King in Lincoln.
“Rosary making has been a hobby of mine for a long time, since I learned in college,” she wrote, sharing her story.
“Mostly I’ve just made them to be able to give away to people when they are in need or for my students, family or other gifts. So when we got the invitation to participate in this project it gave me a mission or purpose for my rosary making, which has been rewarding. As I’ve been making them, I’ve been thinking about and praying for the people who will receive them.” It’s a prayers-now, prayers-later winning situation.
Sister Mary Guadalupe said making the rosaries is another way to build and strengthen community.
“I’ve been the only one tying the knots so far, but others have been helping with cutting the rope, stringing the beads, cutting and burning the ends and bundling them into groups of 25,” she said.
“For those of us participating, it’s been a really bonding experience to share with one another the progress that we were making,” she added. “At first some of us thought that the task might be a little beyond [feasibility] but wanted to try anyway, and with our combined efforts, we are realizing that it just might be a great evangelization tool.”
She explained that she brings them wherever she goes. “It’s been a great conversation starter when people ask what I’m doing, and I’m able to explain the World Mission Rosary and about Fulton Sheen’s beatification.”
Sister Mary Alma, another one of the School Sisters of Christ the King, has seen joy in this project and highlighted a beautiful connection. She wrote, “I would say that it has been a fun project to work together on with our Sisters. I am particularly happy to do this, as Bishop Fulton Sheen was the Bishop of the Rochester Diocese in New York when I was a child. I have his name on my grade-school report cards. So it is a little way of showing some gratitude for all he did for us as our Bishop.”
That connection to the soon-to-be Blessed Fulton Sheen extends to the Carmelite Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Ada, Mich. Shared one sister, “Our sisters were all very excited to have a part in the Beatification of Bishop Sheen. We feel close to him, as he visited us many years ago.”
Sister Jude Andrew said the Ada Carmelites were one of the first groups of religious to finish their set of 1,000 rosaries. Additionally, she explained, “Their feedback was helpful so we could streamline the process and assist other groups with their wisdom.”
Msgr. Landry could not be more thankful for all these efforts, telling the National Catholic Register, “I am so grateful to the women religious of the country for their willingness to help out with this project. They really are the mothers of us all in praying, particularly to Our Lady” — to whom Fulton Sheen was so greatly dedicated.
A longer version of this story is available at the National Catholic Register.
