More than 250 men knelt outside Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral on Saturday to pray and celebrate two years of the Rosary crusade. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
In 2021, the men began to publicly pray the Rosary in the forecourt of the cathedral on the first Saturday of every month.
“It’s a sacrifice because it’s going to cost you something. It has to. And it costs your most valuable gift — your time” said Ivica Kovac, Life Marriage and Family Officer with the Sydney Archdiocese, crusade leader and member of Sydney’s Croatian Catholic community.
The initiative began with the Knights of the Precious Blood, a lay men’s movement drawn from the Croatian community.
Mr Kovac and other members of the knights were inspired by lay Catholics in Poland and Ireland praying the Rosary in the harshest of weather conditions.
“There was about 30-35 of us in that first gathering, and now it’s gone to a whole other level,” he said.
Now hundreds of men spend the beginning of each month answering the call, offering reparation and repentance to God in honour of Our Lady.
On their knees for close to an hour, many men have grown accustomed to the hard concrete floor of the cathedral’s forecourt, offering up the pain in their prayer.
Others come prepared with towels, backpacks, garden kneeling pads or even soccer shinpads to help persist in their devotion.
This year also saw the crusade’s biggest crowd of more than 500 people in October, traditionally dedicated to the Rosary and feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and a new statue of Our Lady of Fatima was brought to the crusade.
FULL STORY
Rosary Crusaders celebrate two years (By George Al-Akiki, The Catholic Weekly)
