Catholics prepare for annual Rosary Sunday celebration

By Andrew Junker, The Catholic Sun
August 2, 2007

About 50 local Catholics gathered July 19 at the Diocesan Pastoral Center in downtown Phoenix to discuss one of the longest-running religious celebrations in the state.

Rosary Sunday will be entering its 32nd year this Oct. 28 and will feature, as it always does, a blessing procession, guest speaker, exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and a public recitation of the rosary.

The event draws nearly 6,000 Catholics, inspiring other dioceses to offer similar celebrations over the years.

One such celebration was recently held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. It boasted 50,000 Catholics all praying the rosary.

Though that level of participation may be a ways off in Phoenix, organizers of Rosary Sunday hope to increase attendance in the years to come.

“Phoenix is now the fifth largest city in the U.S.,” said Mario Fierros, director of Hispanic media relations for the event.

There’s no reason why Rosary Sunday couldn’t double its attendance in a few short years, he said.

Knight of Columbus Rick Jeffrey agreed. He’s the Rosary Sunday chairman and thinks that this year’s program will draw more people to the event.

“We need to make sure they understand that this Rosary Sunday is going to be unlike any other Rosary Sunday,” he told the group of volunteers whose job it will be to promote the event to parishes throughout the diocese.

This year’s Rosary Sunday will be dedicated to Our Lady, Queen of All Saints. The accompanying theme for the annual poster contest, open to grade-school children, will be “Our Lady and My Favorite Saint.”

This year’s main speaker will be Fr. Francis Mary, a Franciscan Missionary of the Eternal Word, who hosts “Life on the Rock,” a popular youth-themed program on Eternal Word Television Network.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted is scheduled to preside over the event.

“We’d like to have a lot of young people there,” said Fierros of choosing Fr. Mary as this year’s only speaker.

Dorothy Westfall, who has been involved in Rosary Sunday since its inception, said a lot of that would depend on getting more people involved.

She hopes the event will grow so large in the coming years that one day it will have to be moved to nearby Chase Field to accommodate the crowds.

Jeffrey asked the volunteers to pray for the success of this year’s Rosary Sunday, “however God chooses to define success.”