A Children's Rosary Group Makes a Visit to Radio Maria Ireland

 

The Children's Rosary from St. Patrick's Church in Celbridge, Ireland gathered in the photo below. They took a mini bus to the Radio Maria Station in Ireland (photo above) where they led the Rosary at 12:30 pm on Saturday June 28, 2025. This was also the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Members of the Children's Rosary have been helping to lead the Rosary at 12:30 pm on Saturday afternoons. It has been a lovely way for listeners to hear members of the Children's Rosary each week from different parts of the country. This is the first time one of the groups has traveled to lead the prayers on site at the station. Usually they call into the station. The children had a lovely visit. Sixteen children attended, six parents, two group leaders and two Radio Maria staff. Anne Carney, one of the group leaders, share "the Radio Maria staff were so welcoming and arranged a little party for the children and parents also. We had a wonderful time". 

The Children's Rosary from West Chicago visits the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin

The Children's Rosary at St. Mary's Church in West Chicago, USA recently sent some pictures from their Children's Rosary group. The picture above was taken in May on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima. 

The group leader shared, "Some great news we wanted to share is that we are blessed to have Father Andrew Buchanan from St. Mary’s in West Chicago accompany our group and help us in the children’s consecration. Attached are pictures of our group on the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima and a pilgrimage we made with the group’s families to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin." 

This Children's Rosary group will be using our book Child Consecration (https://consagraciondeninos.com) to make a 33 Day personal Consecration journey beginning September 4. 

Visit to Gap, France

Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28, 2025 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He has been spending the month of July at La Salette Shrine in the Alps. He grew up helping the Children's Rosary and participating in it. He now is helping to spread the Children's Rosary to more parishes and schools. Please keep his trip in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip. His dispatches are often rich with history as he has a love of this subject. 

On Friday, July 11, I had a day off from volunteer work, and I decided to go on the excursion organized for the volunteers to Gap. We arrived first at a park just outside the city called, "Parc National des Écrins." I spent some time in front of the Château de Charance, a majestic old building facing terraced gardens, which overlook an expansive view of the surrounding area. The Château was built in the tenth century as used as a military fortification against the Medieval counts of Provence. In the fourteenth century, it was bought by a French bishop and remained in the possession of various bishops until the French Revolution, being alternately destroyed and restored several times. During the French revolution, it was appropriated as a national asset by the revolutionary government. It had various owners throughout the nineteenth century before being acquired by the local government and opened to the public in 1973. 

The garden in front of it is an English-style garden, first designed and laid out in the nineteenth century. The English-style garden differs from the French or Italian-style gardens, which were inspired by the Baroque era and the Renaissance respectively. Less ordered, the English garden perhaps is more reminiscent of the Romantic time, freer and wilder, with less fixed lines and schemes. 

After having lunch, we drove into the old town of Gap, at the center of which is the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Arnoux, or more colloquially, the Gap Cathedral. It is a very pretty building, which is quite easily visible from a far distance away given its high steeple.

There had been various churches built on that site since the fifth century, but they were destroyed and new ones built throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period. 

In the mid-nineteenth century, the local bishop decided to build a new Church on the site of a previous one, which had become old and dilapidated. That is the current structure which still stands. It was built in a NeoGothic style, with Romanesque and even Byzantine influence. 

Gothic architecture arose during the High Middle Ages as a successor to Romanesque architecture. It is characterized by pointed arches and very tall stained glass windows, both of which are facilitated by flying buttresses, large support structures which project out the sides of the Church and help to sustain the enormous weight of the pointed arches. Before the High Middle Ages, engineers and architects didn't know how to support the weight of a pointed arch sufficiently to construct one that was very high, so Romanesque architecture consists more of rounded arches, which are much lower in height. 

The front of the Cathedral does have rounded arches above the doors, indicating a Romanesque component, and the front of the Church (and the interior too) is comprised of differently colored stones, a decidedly Byzantine feature. 

As I stood outside the Church, attempting to film a short video, I noticed someone waving at me. It turned out to be someone my mother and I had met at the Adoratio Conference in Toulon last summer. She was happy to see me and told me that she was still interested in starting a Children's Rosary but had been held back in the past year by some health issues. 

In the interior of the Church, there are some very nicely done paintings and elegant stonework. I went inside to pray, and percolating at the back of my mind was the idea that I should seek out the pastor and try to give him some Children's Rosary materials. Seeing no one about, however, I figured I would need to head to the presbytery. But since I wanted to pray first, I settled down in the pews; not ten minutes later, some people walk in with a tall priest, clad in a long black cassock. After the group finished going over preparations for a baptism the next day, I addressed myself to the priest, who I found out was the pastor. He is from the Community of Saint Martin, which took over administration of the Church in 2021. 

The order was founded in 1976 by a Fr. Jean-François Guérin, a priest who, incidentally enough, was at one point chaplain at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Paris that I visited and discussed in an earlier post. The order incorporates many traditional elements of the Roman rite, such as the Divine Office sung in Latin. 

The pastor told me that they had many families at the Basilica. He was very interested in the Children's Rosary and accepted the proffered materials. 

After that, I walked around a bit, took some pictures from the back of the Church and from the rest of the lovely downtown before making my way back to the group to return to La Salette. 

Mass Above the Clouds

 

Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He has been spending the month of July at La Salette Shrine in the Alps. He grew up helping the Children's Rosary and participating in it. He now is helping to spread the Children's Rosary to more parishes and schools. He is also discerning a vocation to the priesthood. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip. 

On Wednesday morning, some of the volunteers decided to climb up to the summit of Mt. Gargas, which reaches 2,208 meters high, next to La Salette Shrine for Mass at dawn. We left the Shrine at 4:30 am. It was my first time reaching the very top of the mountain, and the view on the way up was quite splendid. One can see from the pictures that we were above cloud level, and it was cold with a strong wind. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, a T-shirt, a sweater, and a winter coat, and I was still quite cold. 

La Salette Shrine was visible far below, and I really felt like this was probably the closest thing people had to being in a plane before the twentieth century. We had Mass, which was quite nice, although the pall and corporal very nearly blew away more than once. 

Not all of the volunteers went on this hike, but I daresay those who did consider themselves quite blessed for the experience.

A Familiar Face

 

Asher began a year-long journey to help spread the Children's Rosary on June 28. The month of July he is spending as a volunteer at La Salette Shrine in France. Today he was praying in the chapel when Janet Vogel entered. He recognized her. We met Janet last summer in France at the Adoratio Conference in Toulon. She has since begun a Children's Rosary prayer group in Switzerland. Both Asher and Janet will be attending the Adoratio Conference which begins July 13 at Notre-Dame du Laus. Asher will only be able to attend on July 14 but he looks forward to seeing other Children's Rosary group leaders who will be attending. 

Children's Rosary Participates in Corpus Christi Procession in Germany

 

We received these lovely pictures today from the Children's Rosary group in Fulda, Germany. They participated in the Corpus Christi Procession on Thursday June 19 from the Church "Rabanus-Maurus-Kirche".

Heights of the Hills

"In His hand are the deep places of the earth; The heights of the hills are His also" (Psalm 95:4)

Dear Friends,

As many of you may know Asher Kaufman, age 18, left on June 28 for a year-long trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He is spending July in the French Alps at La Salette Shrine. Primarily he is assigned to volunteering at their welcome desk but he has also been helping in the housekeeping section of the Shrine making beds and in the kitchen washing dishes. After making 50 beds his first day, he happily reported he knows how to make a hospital corner properly. 

As La Salette is a pilgrimage site he has had the opportunity to meet many pilgrims and priests and share with them about the Children's Rosary. After six days of work volunteers at the Shrine are given a day off. Each day there is an excursion to various villages in the region. Only those on a day off can travel to the excursion. Last Friday Asher went on one of these excursions. 

The village was on the mountain next to the shrine but on the far side of the mountain. As the crow flies, it was 14 kms but it took them 1 hour by car to arrive there. As they approached the village they saw a group of people walking with some purpose across a field. 

At first they thought they might be looking for something and one person joked that they were looking for gold. But once Asher arrived, he did speak with this group and found out they were botanists from Grenoble taking plant samples from the mountain. 

This small village had a swift moving river running through it. The views are beautiful and give glory to God for all He has made. "In His hand are the deep places of the earth; The heights of the hills are His also" (Psalm 95:4).

Please keep Asher and this trip in your prayers. May it be fruitful.

Thank you,

Blythe