America Needs Fatima rosary crusade to pray for peace and an end to the coronavirus

+ Enlarge

SALT LAKE CITY – Three local America Needs Fatima Public Square Rosary Crusade rallies are scheduled this year to bring the message of our Lady of Fatima to Utah and the world.

In 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared several times to three Portuguese shepherd children at Fatima over the course of six months. During those visits, she asked them to pray for peace for the world, the end of World War I and for the conversion of Russia. The annual America Needs Fatima crusade commemorates these events and calls on the world to pray.

In Utah, prayer rallies will be held at St. Ambrose Catholic Church, St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church and the Cathedral of the Madeleine. In addition, a public gathering is scheduled for the southeast corner of 10600 South State Street in Sandy, where the event has been held for the past several years.

The first rally will be held on the lawn of St. Ambrose Catholic Church on Saturday, Oct. 10. Tilly Garcia, who has organized the crusade for the last 10 years, is again leading the annual recitation of the rosary. In years past, more than a dozen people, including several members of Garcia’s family, have attended the event; Garcia is hoping for more participants this year.

The rosary has a special place in Garcia’s life. Her daughter Ariel suffers from severe medical problems, and Garcia said Ariel has experienced healing due to her mother’s devotion to Our Lady and to St. Padre Pio.

This year’s rosary crusade is particularly important due to the turmoil the United States and the world is experiencing, Garcia said.

“We are going to be praying for our nation, for the elections and the end of this virus problem and to end abortion,” she said.

This will be the third rosary crusade for John Koenig, a St. Thomas More parishioner, who has a singular devotion to Mary that was born when, as a 17-year-old sophomore in Catholic school, he was encouraged to pray the rosary every day, he said. Koenig has prayed the rosary daily ever since. He credits the Virgin Mother with preserving his life in miraculous ways several times throughout his 77 years.

Koenig gives a set of rosary beads to everyone he meets.

“There is a war today; Satan is in charge of the world,” he said. “I think some of the people that we don’t recognize that are praying are doing more to save the world than the people who are on their knees somewhere showing off. The rosary is the weapon that people take for granted.”

At the rosary crusade this year participants will be socially distanced; those who would like to are welcome to wear a mask. For the event, Garcia brings a special statue of Our Lady and places it on a rose-decorated table to be honored by those attending.

Also on Oct. 10, a public rosary will be held at the southeast corner of State Street in Sandy; St. Joseph the Worker parishioner Helen Corena has organized this event for the past several years.

It’s important to pray the rosary every day, as Our Lady of Fatima requested, “especially with everything that’s going on,” Corena said.

The public square rosary at the cathedral is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 13. Ursula Quintana, who has volunteered with the America Needs Fatima organization for three years and is a Cathedral of the Madeline parishioner, is organizing the event, which will follow the 8 a.m. Mass.

Oct. 13 is known as the Day of the Miracle of the Sun, when Our Lady of Fatima miraculously caused the sun to dance or zigzag in the sky. Quintana described the miracle as “an unnecessary mercy, since we are entitled to nothing. We are to give everything and are entitled to nothing. Yet she loves us that much that she appeared then, she graced with that miracle and she continues to appear and speak to us thereafter.”

Quintana compared saying the rosary with a painting of his/her handprints done by a small child for its mother, “but that mother treasures it until the day of her death because that’s her child; that’s their love.”

“I feel like it’s a very simple and a very humble gesture,” she said. “For me personally, it’s like honoring her and placing my hands on her heart, knowing that it’s little, it’s so little, but yet something I can do out of love for her.”

Quintana previously led rosary crusades at the cathedral in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

More than 20,000 America Needs Fatima rosary crusades are planned to be held across the United States this year. America Needs Fatima sponsors public square rosary rallies and a home visitation program, in which a statue of Our Lady visits thousands of private homes yearly, and distributes millions of rosaries, devotional items and calendars each year.