News
Featured Image
 shutterstock.com

OTTAWA, August 20, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Canada’s first Rosary Bowl takes place in the nation’s capital on Thursday, and Ottawa’s archbishop is urging all Catholics who can attend to come and pray for their country.

The Rosary Bowl will be held from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. on August 22, the feast of the Queenship of Mary, at TD Place Stadium in Lansdowne Park.

That’s also the site of the 1947 massive five-day Marian Congress when Canada’s bishops first consecrated the country to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

“Wherever you are, come,” Archbishop Terrence Prendergast said in an interview with Rosary Bowl organizer Dennis Girard, in a video on the archdiocesan website.

At its simplest and most obvious, a Rosary Bowl is public recitation of the rosary. The practice began in the United States to the 1940s, with Rosary Bowls, or “Mary’s Hour” drawing thousands of participants to such arenas as the Hollywood Bowl, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and Dodger Stadium in the 1950s, according to the LA Times.

The devotion fell out of fashion at the end of the 1960s, but was revived in 2007 with a Rosary Bowl before the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

Fr. Patrick Peyton, the founder of the Family Rosary Crusade, who was present at the 1947 Marian Congress in Canada, used Rosary Bowls to promote his rosary crusade, Girard told LifeSiteNews. 

As for Thursday’s event, there’s still “enough time for you to plan to come to Ottawa, or if you’re in Ottawa, rearrange your plans to come that day to the Rosary Bowl,” Prendergast said.

“Or join us by your prayers, uniting your sacrifices and your thoughts to those who will come, so that Mary may be honored and through her, her Son will be glorified and God’s will may be manifested in our diocese, our country, and our world,” he said.  

“Big event!” echoed Companion of the Cross Fr. Mark Goring in a video exhorting Catholics to attend the Rosary Bowl in Ottawa.

Goring drew a direct connection between the coming Rosary Bowl and the “black mass” ritual the Satanic Temple of Canada held at Ottawa heavy metal bar The Koven August 17.

He was one of seven priests and some 120 Catholic laymen who took part in a prayer vigil outside the bar during the four-hour blasphemous ritual, which organizers claimed did not involve using a consecrated host.

“The devil’s freaking out because Canadians are waking up to the Blessed Virgin Mary’s call to pray the rosary,” Goring said in his video.

“When I’m down there” praying outside The Koven, “I’m going to be praying the rosary in anticipation of the Rosary Bowl,” he added. 

“Please come out to Rosary Bowl.”

That was echoed by John Pacheco, who helped spread the word about Saturday’s prayer vigil outside The Koven.  

“When I first heard about the black mass, the first thing that came into my head was the Rosary Bowl,” Pacheco told LifeSiteNews in an earlier interview. “The timing is just too coincidental.”

Archbishop Prendergast was outside Notre Dame Cathedral last Saturday night with Bishop Guy Desrochers of Cornwall to bless those going to pray on the street during the black mass ritual.

He will be attending Thursday’s Rosary Bowl with Bishop Pierre-Olivier Tremblay of Trois-Rivières, Quebec, where Canada’s national Marian shrine at Cap-de-la-Madeleine is located.

Girard and his wife Angelina, who founded the Marian Devotional Movement in 2017, had no intention of holding a Rosary Bowl when they began planning a five-day pilgrimage from Ottawa to Cap-de-la-Madeleine, home of the miraculous pilgrim statue of Our Lady of the Cape.

However, their contact with TD Place Stadium offered them the facility free of charge for one hour on the Feast of the Queenship of Mary.

“Our Lady is driving this train,” Girard told LifeSiteNews.

“We are returning to the exact holy ground where our country was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1947 and we’re bringing a Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of the Cape,” he said.

“And, of course, it’s just a few weeks before the federal election as well, so we know Our Lady has orchestrated this, because we sure didn’t plan it.”

Girard doesn’t know how many people will show up Thursday but he says interest is running high.

“The Rosary Bowl has definitely struck a chord in the hearts of the faithful. Our Lady of the Cape, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, Queen of Canada must be speaking to many souls!” he told LifeSiteNews.

“The anticipation to gather and pray is palpable. We just received word of yet another busload coming,” he added.

“If anyone is still on the fence and wondering whether they should attend, the answer is yes!” 

The Girards, whose current mission is to increase enrolment in the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary, are already looking ahead to the Rosary Bowl of 2022.

That’s the 75th anniversary of Canada’s consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the 1947 Marian Congress, and they hope to “fill the stadium.” 

For more information on the Rosary Bowl, go to rosarybowl.com

For more information or to enroll in the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary, go here. For more information on the five-day Capital to Cape August 21 to 25 pilgrimage, go here.

RELATED:

Canada’s first Rosary Bowl on August 22 promises to ‘unleash torrent of grace’: host