MANY school children joined the Annual Global Rosary Relay 2020 for its Australian leg recently.
Held on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 19, the annual event is promoted by the international Worldpriest organisation and prays for the sanctification of priests and the Pope’s intentions.
About 25 people gathered at Broken Bay diocese’s Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral, in Waitara, New South Wales, to pray the Rosary as part of the relay.
The prayer gathering was live-streamed, allowing students at Catholic schools around the diocese to join in.
Michelle Chahine, a vocations officer for Broken Bay, organised the event and made sure young people were included.
Seven of Broken Bay’s seminarians attended, along with five students from the nearest Catholic high school and five from the nearest primary school, Catholic Youth Broken Bay representative Rachel Vala, and members of the vocations team.
“I’d spoken to the Catholic Schools Office in Broken Bay and they’d sent out an invitation to everyone to let them know that this was happening, and everyone could stop and log-in at 10.30am and join us, which is what most of them did,” Ms Chahine said.
“So a lot of the primary schools and high schools came on at the same time and gave us a shout-out and prayed with us.
“That was the highlight – to know that young people around the whole diocese had joined us live via Facebook and were sitting there praying the Rosary together, and that we were also probably joined with, we don’t know how many people around the world and at the same time all praying the Rosary.
“It was really beautiful.
“I think everyone in that cathedral really gave it justice and really just prayed beautifully and from the heart that day.
“I think everyone just needed an opportunity to just stop and sit together and just pray.”
COVID-19 restrictions curtailed the usual gathering at the cathedral for the Rosary event
“Normally every year we have our specific groups that come into the cathedral and take part but this year we were very limited in who we could invite,” Ms Chahine said.
Those who attended observed social-distancing guidelines.
Catholics at locations across more than 85 countries prayed during the relay.
The Global Rosary Relay is in its 11th year, and the group said there were more prayer locations this year than ever before.
The group said the relay was “a truly significant and powerful devotional initiative … to recognise and bless the work of priests serving the faithful the world over”.
Each participating prayer location prayed a particular mystery of the Rosary at a particular half-hour on the day “in thanksgiving to God for our priests and to implore the protection and loving care of Our Lady, Mother of all priests, for all her priestly sons”.
“With the coming of midnight on June 19, 2020, the entire world, by then, will have been encircled in prayer for our priests,” the group said.
