51 years after the great crusade, where have all the rosaries gone?

The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
30 May 2004

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51 years after the great crusade, where have all the rosaries gone?

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51 years after the great crusade, where have all the rosaries gone?

‘STORMTROOPER’: Fr Peyton with Cardinal Gilroy and other clergy at a Rosary Crusade at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

By KEN SCULLY

THE Holy Father’s call for the regular recitation of the Rosary and his introduction of five new mysteries – the Mysteries of Light or as some translate the awkward “Luminous” – recalls a time when Australia was assaulted (I use the word kindly) by a crusade for this prayer.

I refer of course to the visit by Irish-American Fr Patrick Peyton, a Holy Cross priest, who after what he regarded as a miraculous cure from illness vowed to spread the Rosary in gratitude.

Thus began his worldwide Rosary Crusade with the slogan “the family that prays together, stays together”; something which a friend of mine who recited the Rosary every day thought somewhat ironic as his own and Fr Peyton’s also were split between continents.

When Fr Peyton and his storm troopers (what’s a crusade without them?) arrived in Sydney I was assigned to cover the first stages of the enterprise.

That was to produce what Fr Peyton (or rather his team of advertising, public relation personnel and priests) regarded as the essential media barnstorming. They hit the radio and press, with Catholic journals cajoled into getting out Rosary supplements. I might mention one of the priests in his team was the parish priest of Hollywood who enlivened us with tales of Bing Crosby, Myrna Loy and Loretta Young among others. A bit of gossip went along with the rosaries.

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