What's a Rosary Bowl? And why is this one being held then and there? Dennis and Angelina Girard, founders of the Marian Devotional Movement, told LifeSite News that in 2017, the centenary of the Apparitions of Our Lady of Fatime, they vowed to restore devotion to the Rosary, following in the footstepts of Father Luc Desilets. On Ascension eve in 1867, Fr Desilets went into the stone chapel at Cap-de-la-Madeleine, Québec, and found, to his horror, a pig beside the altar munching on a rosary. As M Girard relates the story, the young parish priest "picked up the mangled rosary, shooed the pig out of the chapel and said, 'Men have dropped the rosary and the swine have picked it up.'" Five years after making a vow to restore devotion to the Rosary in his parish, and re-establish enrollment in the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary, he had enrolled 3000 souls, and the parish that was dead, with a pig chewing a rosary, became too small for the number of parishioners.
The Rosary Bowl is the public recitation of the Rosary. As well, there will be brief remarks by Most Rev. Terrence Prendergast, Archbishop of Ottawa, and Bishop Pierre-Olivier Tremblay of Trois-Rivières QC.
The site is the stadium formerly known as Lansdowne Park, now called TD place, the home stadium for the Canadian Football League's Ottawa Redblacks. That wasn't the original plan! When the Girards were organizing a five-day pilgrimage from Ottawa to the Marian shrine at Cap-de-la-Madeleine, home of the miraculous statue of Our Lady of the Cape, who also bears the title of Our Lady of the Rosary, they planned only that pilgrims would visit the stadium which was the site of the massive five-day 1947 Marian Congress, when Canada's bishops consecrated the country to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The Girards envisioned pilgrims strolling the grounds and comparing it to a photo of the historic Congress, which was attended by more than 1.5 million pilgrims, and numerous prelates, including Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York and József Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary. But then the VP of communications for TD Place suggested the Girards actually use the stadium. "I can give you the field for free between 2 and 3, on the feast of the Queenship of Mary," he told them.
"Can you imagine?" said M Girard. "We’ve got this hour window on the feast of the Queenship of Mary, where we're coming to pray the rosary. We are returning to the exact holy ground where our country was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1947 and we're bringing a Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of the Cape. And, of course, it's just a few weeks before the federal election as well, so we know Our Lady has orchestrated this, because we sure didn’t plan it."
"In the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1432," M Girard told LifeSite News, "you find out that conversion is first the work of God, and He does it by pouring grace on hardened hearts, so we need more grace. That's the idea, getting everybody to enroll, so you can unleash this torrent of grace upon the policy makers. And in a devotional sense, you can't beat a whole flock of people, the whole church, praying the Rosary together."
Click here for more information on the Rosary Bowl and the pilgrimage to Cap-de-la-Madeleine. And yes, we have a short (59-second) video. Here it is.
We encourage our readers -- not just Canadians but Americans and anyone who can get there -- to attend the Rosary Bowl (it's FREE) and other pilgrimage events. You will surely receive many graces for doing so, and it's just possible that your prayers may help Canada, which desperately needs conversion to turn away from the secular humanism espoused by its nominally Catholic prime minister, and turn back to God and the Christian values on which the country was built.
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