Children's Rosary August 2025 Newsletter

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Children's Rosary® August 2025 Newsletter

Exploring the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris, France

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 and August in France. 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 and has applied to the seminary through the Archdiocese of Hartford. Please keep both his trip and his vocation in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip. Asher has a love of history so his dispatches are often full of historical details.

At the beginning of last week, I began taking French classes at the Institut Catholique de Paris, a Catholic university in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. It was founded in the late nineteenth century in the buildings of an old convent, the Convent des Carmes. Among the faculty of this university, there was at the beginning of the nineteenth century Édouard Branly, a French physicist known for discovering the principle of radio conduction and the coherer, a kind of precursor to the radio. The coherer was a radio wave detector that conducted electrical current with metal filings. Specifically the metal filings—in the presence of electrical oscillations—begin to adhere to each other, decreasing the resistance and allowing current to flow. Branly's invention was considered very significant for the invention of the radio. He was a devout Catholic and tried to break down the anticlerical factions of the scientific community that were deeply rooted at the time.

There is today a seminary adjoining the university called the Seminaire des Carmes. Right next to the university is a beautiful church called the Church of St. Joseph des Carmes. It is the first Church in Paris dedicated to St. Joseph, and it was built in the seventeenth century, being consecrated in 1625. It was built at the request of Pope Paul V for the discalced Carmelites in Paris, and there is a painting just above the altar in the center that was gifted by the Queen of France, Anne of Austria, to the convent (she was Austrian, yes, and the wife of the French King Louis XIII; much like how Marie Antoinette was Austrian and the wife of Louis XVI).

The grounds of the university itself are very nice, with neogothic architecture and a beautiful garden courtyard near the building where I study. I take classes in the morning five days a week and twice a week in the afternoon too. They are intensive language courses offered during the summer intended to help develop grammatical and oral skills.

Very quickly after starting classes at the "Catho" (as it is colloquially called around here), I discovered the Church of St. Sulpice, one of the largest and most well-known churches in Paris, is not far away. I have gotten in the habit of going there in the evenings for adoration, and it really is a delightfully ornate church.

Originally, on the site of the present church there was an older Romanesque church that was built in 1180 under the reign of Philippe II Auguste. It was dedicated to St. Sulpice the Pious, archbishop of Bourges in the seventh century. St. Francis de Sales preached there in the early seventeenth century. 

By 1636, it was determined that the church that had been built 450 years before was too small to accomodate the needs of the parish, and so another one was built, the current one, starting in 1645. Jean-Jacques Olier, who founded the community of Sulpicians who exist to this day wished for a church to be built to rival even Notre Dame de Paris, the great Gothic cathedral that had been built in the High Middle Ages on the Île de la Cité in the Seine River.

Anne of Austria (the same who donated the painting to the Carmelites) laid the first stone on February 20, 1646. Due to the difference in height of the old and new churches (the new was higher), there was room to built a crypt underneath the new church for the parish cemetery. The new church was built in a neoclassical style, hearkening back to the ancient Greek and Roman architecture, much like the Church of the Madeleine that I spoke of during my first visit to Paris about a month and a half ago. 

Nevertheless, construction continued for over two centuries, and thus different architectural styles found their way into the building, including a significant Baroque component. In 1719, a new pastor arrived at the Church, Fr. Jean-Baptiste Languet de Gergy. He drew the interest of the Duc d'Orléans (the great-great-great grandfather of the young prince who was killed over a century later at the Porte Maillot), who helped to patronize the construction of the church and personally laid the first stone of the Chapel of St. John the Baptist. 

The abbe during the French Revolution refused to submit to the Civil Constitution for the clergy that was proposed by the revolutionary government and which that government wished the French priests to sign. Nevertheless, the Church became, like many others in France, a "temple of reason" during the revolution. One can find traces of this occupation even today; on the tympanum over the main entrance of the Church, there is an inscription that reads, "The French people recognize the supreme being and the immortality of the soul."

The church was known for its role in the anti-slavery efforts in France in the late nineteenth century, when Cardinal Charles Lavigerie held a meeting there to that effect under the patronage of Pope Leo XIII. 

Victor Hugo was married to Adèle Foucher in the church in 1822. 

Those are the historical details, but what they do not convey is the extraordinary sense of awe and even joy that I experienced upon walking into the majestic space and beholding the magnificent interior. It is, to put it mildly, quite a beautiful church. 

Just through the door, one is struck not only by the massive space but also by the sheer number of small side altars, each ornamented with three paintings or sculptures depicting biblical scenes or scenes from the lives of the saints. In the Vatican I rite of the Mass, concelebration was not practiced, and so if one had many priests to celebrate Mass, they each celebrated their own; hence the need for many side altars. They are not much used now, but nevertheless they hold many important paintings and works of art.

For instance, immediately upon entering (if one enters on the right), there is a small side chapel dedicated to the Holy Angels. It contains three paintings, Saint Michael Slaying the Demon, Heliodorus Driven From the Temple, and Jacob's Struggle with the Angel; all three are by Eugene Delacroix.

Delacroix was a very important French Romantic painter from the nineteenth century; he is considered the leader of the Romantic school, and he is probably best known for his painting, La Liberté Guidant le Peuple (Liberty Guiding the People), with an image of lady liberty, tricolor flag in hand, at the head of a large revolutionary crowd. I am sure we have all seen this painting at some point in our lives. He was awarded the honor of painting for the chapel in 1849, but it was not until 1856 that he set himself seriously to work on the completion of the work, and he continued until 1861. He recalls that he decided to dedicate the chapel to the Holy Angels, and only after making the decision did he realize that he had so decided on the Feast of the Holy Angels. 

Delacroix was known for being a perfectionist, and he once said, "Finishing requires a heart of steel; you have to take a stand on everything, and I find difficulties where I expect none." Indeed, due to the humidity of the walls, he had to use a mixture of wax, resin, and oil and push it into the walls; many, many layers of this was used, leading to a tedious and fatiguing process. 

It is important also to note that Delacroix personally was quite changed during and after his work on Saint Sulpice (he died only two years after finishing). An agnostic, he gradually came to include religious themes in much of his later work. As the informational plaque in the church notes, he said shortly before his death, "God is in us; it is this interior presence which makes us admire the beautiful, which makes us rejoice when we have done well and advises us not to share the happiness of the wicked."

There is, in the middle of the nave, a pulpit from which the celebrant preaches his sermon. It was built in 1788, on the very eve of the French Revolution. It is in the neoclassical style, and it is considered very important in terms of equilibrium and distribution of weight. I have included a picture, and in it you will observe that the pulpit rests only on the two stairs that lead up to it. The Holy Spirit is depicted right over the preacher's head (an obvious allusion to the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and the divinely inspired sermon the priest is about to give), and the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity flank the pulpit (they are depicted as women). It was actually from this chair that the pastor in 1791 refused in front of a large crowd to submit to the Civil Constitution for the Clergy.

Those are some small details from this amazing church, but hopefully they give a small taste of the majesty and splendor of the building.

To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE

Children's Rosary Members Visit Lourdes

 

Children's Rosary group leader Lynn Gallagher and her husband and children recently visited Lourdes in France. They were wonderful representatives for the Children's Rosary. They report that they wore their t-shirts as much as possible.

These Children's Rosary T-shirts worn at locations around the world by members give Our Blessed Mother an open door. A family standing behind them can read about the Children's Rosary and find out where to get more information. This helps to bring more children to prayer. A special thank you to the Gallagher family who run a Children's Rosary prayer group in Castledawson, Ireland.

Our Lady of Compassion, Paris

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 and August in France. 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 and has applied to the seminary through the Archdiocese of Hartford. Please keep both his trip and his vocation in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip. Asher has a love of history so his dispatches are often full of historical details.

On August 2, I took the bus from Lyon to Paris in the morning. It was quite a long bus ride, and I did not arrive until about 6:30 in the evening at the Paris Bercy bus station. Once there, I discovered that the place for picking up rideshares or taxis was all the way across a large park to the side of the bus station, which necessitated numerous trips back and forth for the different bags and boxes I was transporting.

Nevertheless, all went rather seamlessly, and afterwards I went right to a student housing facility that my host in Paris had reserved for me. He is the pastor of Our Lady of Compassion Church on the northwest side of town, and he reserved the spot at the student housing for me to stay at. 

The student housing is really the perfect place; it is named St. Jean Bosco house, and it has an evident Catholic culture to it. There is a priest here who administers the place, and he says Mass here each morning in a chapel for the students.

In fact, this building used to house the Little Sisters of the Poor, starting in the nineteenth century, when the place was built. 

It was designed by Emile Vaudremer, who also designed other churches in Paris like Notre Dame d'Auteuil and St. Pierre de Montrouge. It is there that I have my meals and daily Mass, as well as access to a library and the grounds.

I am helping the pastor at his parish, Notre Dame de Compassion, which is north of where I am staying, near the Arc de Triomphe. 

The church itself is quite small, and the monstrous 33-floor Hyatt Regency hotel (the third largest in Paris) across the street easily towers over it, like a Melvillian leviathan over a small minnow. 

It is built in the form of a Greek cross, where each leg of the cross is the same like, like a plus sign. This gives the Church a distinctive appearance. 

The church's story begins almost two hundred years ago, in a midsummer day in 1842. That morning, the royal prince of the French, Ferdinand Philippe, set out from the Palais des Tuileries to his visit his father, Louis Philippe, the king, and then to review a regiment at St. Omer. The young prince belonged to the Orleanist clan, who had been important forces in French politics for a long time before Louis Philippe's ascension to the throne in 1830. Cousins of the previous royal family, the Bourbons, and thus part of the Capetian line that had ruled France since the Middle Ages, theirs were nevertheless some complicated family dynamics, to say the least. 

During the French Revolution, Louis Philippe's father, the Duc d'Orléans, had been a very progressive voice urging popular representation in the French government. He had even voted for the death of his cousin, King Louis XVI, an act of regicide that rendered him an adversary of French royalists from then on.

After the revolution, the Congress of Vienna had sought to reign in the imperial ambitions of Napoleonic France and render the government exactly as it had been on the eve of the revolution in 1789. To that end, the brother of the late king, Louis XVIII was placed on the throne, and the period was known as the Bourbon Restoration. During this period, the Church was allowed to exist without persecution again in France and own property, two things that had not been the case during the revolutionary years. 

However, pace the Congress, the country was not exactly as it had been twenty-five years before, on the eve of revolution. Much had happened. A king had been executed, a constitution had been written, a republic had been instituted; in a word, a cloak had been rent that no tailor could mend; a wound had been thrust open that no doctor could heal. 

After the brief fifteen year restoration, Charles X, who had been crowned upon the death of the brother in 1824, was deposed in a revolution that took place in Paris in July of 1830. It was very brief, not lasting more than a month, and thus it came to be known as the July Revolution, and the monarchy it seated came to be known as the July monarchy.

Thus it was that Louis Philippe came to the throne as a constitutional monarch, pushing out his Bourbon cousin. Nevertheless, this constitutional monarch, this democratic king would remain something of a paradox for many political observers in France, a bastard child that was intolerably progressive for the old monarchists and not revolutionary enough for the young progressives. 

Indeed, this monarchy would not last more than twenty years, to be sent crashing down in the popular revolts of 1848 that swept across Europe. 

Nevertheless, all that lay years in the future on that midsummer day in 1842 when the young prince found himself on his way to see his parents, the king and queen. As Ferdinand Philippe approached the Porte Maillot on the outskirts of the city, the horses drawing his carriage suddenly took fright at the tall arch and reared back, throwing his rider violently to the ground. He was mortally injured in the fall, dying some hours later in the presence of his parents and family. He was thirty-two years old. 

His death is considered by many to have had important political consequences for the Orleanist monarchy in France. This is because the young Duc d'Orléans had been quite popular with the French populace and had helped to ingratiate the July monarchy to the population; his father lacked such popularity, leaving the royal family in an increasingly isolated position after his death. 

The queen proposed that a chapel be built to commemorate the prince's death, dedicated to Our Lady of Compassion, the patron of those killed in accidents. 

Most of the interior of the church was designed by Ary Scheffer, a friend of the duke's and a Dutch-French romantic artist. It is built in neo-Byzantine style. Notably, there is a sculpture of the duke lying on the road with an angel interceding for his soul at his head; the angel was sculpted by the duke's sister. 

The stained glass windows are also very interesting as they were not made int he traditional Medieval fashion of attaching small pieces of colored glass. Rather, they were painted and then subjected to extreme heat, giving them quite a nice appearance. The windows depict the patron saints of the Orleanist family, notably St. Philip. 

This, then, is the parish at which I now work. I help prepare for and serve the Masses four days a week. It is a very nice community, and it is situated in a very upscale neighborhood of Paris, not much mobbed with tourists but with very nice homes.

It is not a massive Church like St. Denis or Notre Dame de Paris; quite on the contrary, anyone in a hurry might miss it entirely as they walk by, but nevertheless, in its own way it evokes a sense of awe and reverence, recalling an important tragedy in the history not only of the city but of the entire nation.

To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE

An Invitation to Join the Children's Rosary in McAllen, Texas

 

We received these lovely pictures from Children's Rosary group leader Maria Luisa Guerra. She leads a Children's Rosary at Holy Spirit Parish in McAllen, Texas. Not only does she have a Children's Rosary she also leads a yearly Consecration journey with families from her group and the parish using our book Child Consecration. 

Maria shared, "We were in the foyer at Holy Spirit church this weekend both Saturday and Sunday (August 2nd and 3rd) inviting others to join and also to pray the consecration and sign up for that as well the children went up to the microphone at the end a Mass and invited others and told them about their experience.

New Children's Rosary at Holy Cross Church in Tralee, Ireland

We received a lovely update from Ciara Buckley who jointly runs the new Children's Rosary group in Tralee.  She shared, "The prior at Holy Cross Dominicans Tralee Fr. David McGovern OP was immediately positive in his response to the suggestion of establishing a Children’s Rosary group at Holy Cross. Fr David was very supportive in encouraging a number of leaders to work together to bring the idea to fruition. He reached out to the many families in the church’s thriving community to come along on our first evening. 

Fr. David and the then sacristan, Sr. Edel Mary, were very keen to have the children come to pray at Our Lady’s altar in the main church. It is a beautiful altar, and attracts many people daily and, in particular, during the annual Novena to Our Lady of Fatima in May. 

On the evening of July 29th, our leaders Emma and Mary Angela had prepared the altar beautifully, and with great anticipation we waited and prayed to Our Lady for the children to come. It was with great joy we watched as over 30 children gathered to pray on our first evening. The children were very familiar with the prayers of Rosary, and all prayed with a deep reverence and gentleness. It was a very holy and joyous experience for the priests, brothers, sisters and families gathered in the love of Christ. 

We look forward with great hope to growing our group and to participating in other Children’s Rosary activities, including our first occasion to pray the Rosary on Radio Maria Ireland on Saturday August 23rd." 

We welcome this new Children's Rosary group. The picture above is of the altar where the children led the Rosary. The first meeting was very busy and no pictures were taken. They hope to have a picture next month with the children.  

This is the first of the 10 Dominican communities in Ireland to have joined the Children’s Rosary. 

Visit with Archbishop Herwig Gössl of Bamberg, Germany

On August 2, Archbishop Herwig Gössl of the Bamberg Archdiocese of Germany visited Heroldsbach Shrine for a Children's Rosary and opening of the Carlo Acutis Poster exhibition. Bishop Gössl was present for the Children's Rosary which was led by members of the Children's Rosary from Heroldsbach Shrine and Dormitz, Germany. 

Children's Rosary Group leader Gregor Baranyai, of Pfarrei St. Franziskus, Kirche Christ König, Berlin-Lübars Germany (shown directly below far right) also attended with his family. Children's Rosary group leaders Lucia Leder, Christian Leder and Heidi and Matthias Dümmling are also shown in the photo directly below.

Bishop Gössl was presented with a gift from the Children's Rosary at the end of the visit. 

The Rector of Heroldbach Shrine, Pater Ludwig Müller, CRVC (shown below in the center of the picture near the flag) was also in attendance.