Family rosary rally attests to power of prayer

“We believe that we survived because we were living the message of Fatima,” Fr. Hubert Schiffer said repeatedly before his death in 1982. “We lived and prayed the rosary daily in that home.”

Numerous sources recount that when Fr. Schiffer and his seven fellow Jesuit missionaries stepped outside their rectory door on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, and stood on a Hiroshima street outside their church, nearly everything in every direction had been incinerated or flattened for as far as their eyes could see. And yet, history shows, aside from a few minor injuries associated with the rectory’s broken windows, the priests and their companions not only lived, but suffered no hearing loss nor trace of radiation maladies despite such proximity to the blast that any unexpected survivors should have suffered both.

Those who spoke at the Diocese of Wichita’s Inaugural Family Rosary Rally that was held on Sunday, Oct. 19, at Wichita’s St. Catherine of Siena Parish, had their own testimonies about the potency of a simple but profound prayer that centers on meditating on the life of Christ and his mother: a brother who was bitterly alienated from the faith of his upbringing for many years who returned to it in the waning moments of his life and thereby helped bring his surviving family members into the Church or back to confession; an infant daughter clinging to life who returned to consciousness and later health, amid those prayers; a couple struggling to have another child who were able to expand their family with the help of the rosary; an alcoholic who could not control her binges but who found sobriety after she became a devotee of the prayer.

Fr. Edmond Kline, who spearheaded the event, credited the rosary with helping to bring him back to confession after two decades away from it. And during his testimony, Bishop Carl Kemme cited the example of St. Bartolo Longo, who Pope Leo XIV had canonized in Rome that very day. Although raised in the Catholic faith, St. Bartolo had strayed so far from the Church as to become an avowed and active Satanist before he returned to the faith of his youth and avidly propagated devotion to the rosary.

Fr. Kline, who is stationed at Holy Trinity Parish in Little River, encouraged families to pray the rosary together every day. “When we meditate on these eternal mysteries, our souls are flooded with grace,” he said. “We come into contact with the truth. We receive inspiration from God. We grow in virtue.”

Nevertheless, like many of those who spoke that afternoon, Fr. Kline acknowledged that perfect, unfailing focus on those mysteries was uncommon even among the rosary’s most dogged enthusiasts. Nevertheless, he said, even that ongoing struggle to redirect one’s attention was meritorious. 

Fr. Kline, thanked St. Catherine of Siena Pastor Fr. Dan Lorimer for hosting the event. Fr. Lorimer also led a Marian crowning and procession, as well as Eucharistic exposition, adoration, and benediction.

As the rally, which drew enough people on a sunny and mild Sunday afternoon to nearly fill the center pews in St. Catherine’s expansive sanctuary, concluded, Fr. Kline expressed hope that the event would become a tradition.

Joe and Carolyn Spexarth, parishioners from Sacred Heart in Colwich, concurred. “I definitely hope this continues every year,” he said. “What a blessing, having our bishop here and hearing words of wisdom about the power of the rosary in our lives.”

“And be faithful,” she added. “Remain faithful to the rosary day in, day out.”