Our Lady of the Rosary

Memorial

Feast Day

October 7

The Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary commemorates the Christian victory over the Ottoman fleet at the Gulf of Lepanto on 7 October 1571. Pope Saint Pius V, a Dominican, had called for public processions of the Rosary throughout the Papal States during the campaign and on the day of battle. In thanksgiving he instituted a feast of Our Lady of Victory; his successor Gregory XIII renamed it Our Lady of the Rosary in 1573 and extended it to all churches that had a Rosary altar. Pope Clement XI in 1716, after the Christian victory at Petervaradin against the Turks, extended the feast to the universal Church.

The Rosary itself developed in the late Middle Ages from the practice of reciting 150 Hail Marys in imitation of the 150 Psalms, and from the Dominican tradition associated with Blessed Alan de la Roche (d. 1475) and his promotion of the Rosary Confraternities. The fifteen traditional mysteries (joyful, sorrowful, glorious) were enriched by Pope Saint John Paul II in the apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae (16 October 2002), in which he proposed five Mysteries of Light drawn from Christ's public ministry.

The Memorial is observed on 7 October. The Roman Missal allows the proper Mass of Our Lady of the Rosary; the rosary itself, while a devotional rather than liturgical prayer, is endorsed by the Catechism (CCC 971, 2678) as a privileged path of meditation on the mysteries of Christ.