In this year 2024, in which Pope Francis asks us to intensify our prayer in preparation for the Great Jubilee of 2025, the Union of Confraternities of the Diocese of Lugano (UCDL) warmly welcomes the initiative of the Pan-European Forum of Confraternities to dedicate 7 October, the liturgical memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary, to a great act of world prayer. We therefore invite the Confraternities, as well as the individual Brothers and Sisters, to join in prayer in this great “symphony” of prayer that from the whole world will raise supplications to the Father through the intercession of Mary, confident that there will be no lack of graces and blessings from Heaven, aware and certain that in the Rosary, Mary, Shrine of the Holy Spirit, while she is supplicated by us, places herself for us before the Father who filled her with grace and the Son born of her womb, praying with us and for us.
Saint Pope John Paul II, a great devotee of Mary and tireless promoter of the prayer of the Holy Rosary, wrote these words in his Apostolic Letter ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE: «The Church has always attributed particular efficacy to this prayer, entrusting to the Rosary, to its choral recitation and to its constant practice, the most difficult problems. At times when Christianity itself seemed under threat, its deliverance was attributed to the power of this prayer, and Our Lady of the Rosary was acclaimed as the one whose intercession brought salvation.» [n.39]
Let us therefore become pilgrims of hope, let us confidently take up in our hands the rosary of the Holy Rosary, “the sweet chain that binds us to God”, and let us commit ourselves to continue our journey together with the whole Church, not giving in to difficulties that could slow us down or extinguish our vigour, but impelled forward by the conviction that the power of prayer will again and always escape every danger that worries the world and the Church.
Don Fabio Minini
