The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Feast Day

August 22

The Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary celebrates Mary's title and dignity as Queen of Heaven and Queen of all creation, by virtue of her divine motherhood, her singular cooperation in the work of redemption, and her bodily Assumption into heaven. The feast was instituted by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam of October 11, 1954, on the centenary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Pius XII, after extensive theological argument from the Fathers (Saint Ephrem, Saint Andrew of Crete, Saint John of Damascus, Saint Peter Damian, Saint Anselm, Saint Bernard, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Thomas Aquinas) and from the constant liturgical witness, defines the title (without solemn dogmatic definition): the Blessed Virgin Mary should be called Queen, not only because of her divine motherhood, but also because by the will of God she had a great part in the work of our eternal salvation (Ad Caeli Reginam 39). The encyclical established the feast originally on May 31 (the close of the Marian month).

In the 1969 reform of the Calendar by Pope Saint Paul VI, the feast was moved to August 22, the eighth day (octave) after the Solemnity of the Assumption (August 15), to express more clearly its theological link to the Assumption: as Mary is bodily assumed into heaven, so is she crowned Queen. The Optional Memorial in the General Roman Calendar is observed in white.