Benedictine Sisters handcraft 500 rosaries for Sheen beatification

The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration answered the call to help handcraft rosaries for the upcoming celebration of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s beatification.

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen will be beatified at a Mass in September in St. Louis, and the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, Missouri, are playing a small part in the celebration.

Archbishop Sheen, who died in 1979, was one of the most recognizable Catholic figures of the 20th century. He hosted “The Catholic Hour” on radio, which was heard by millions of listeners for two decades. His Emmy Award-winning television program, “Life Is Worth Living,” drew millions of viewers in the 1950s – a remarkable feat for a bishop delivering lessons on faith and morality.

He later served as bishop of the Diocese of Rochester (New York) and was known throughout his life as a gifted orator, writer and advocate for the Church’s missionary work.

That missionary spirit lives on today in an object Archbishop Sheen himself helped popularize: the World Mission Rosary. Each of the five decades are a different color to represent a geographical area – green for the forests and grasslands of Africa, red for the fire of faith shown by missionaries to the Americas, white for the seat of the Holy Father in Europe, yellow for the morning light of the East in Asia and blue for the Pacific Island nations. The idea allowed those in prayer to hold the whole world in one hand and one mind, united in global prayer and mission.

For the beatification Mass, organizers wanted to give each attendee their own rosary to pray the mission rosary together. But with 70,000 people expected, buying that many rosaries was not financially feasible. So organizers turned to religious communities across the country and asked if they would be willing to make them by hand.

“Our community answered the call, committing to make 500 rosaries for the cause,” Sister Lynn Marie D’Souza, OSB, said. “Having learned of the project only in May, time has been tight, but several of us have been steadily working on the effort ever since.”

It’s a small, quiet labor – bead by bead, decade by decade – but one very much in keeping with the man being honored: a man who spent his life finding big and small ways to turn people’s hearts toward the power of missionary work.

The Benedictine Sisters handcrafted 500 World Mission Rosaries to use for the beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.