During the month of May, the Church around the world is joining in a daily Rosary for the intention of the end of the pandemic, as well as a specific intention related to the various victims of the virus.
Each day of the month, a different shrine will lead the daily Rosary, according to local practice.
The beginning and the end of the Rosary Marathon (May 1 and May 31) are led by Pope Francis.
See below to follow the list of the Shrines.
Watch the Rosary live at 6 p.m. Rome time (12 noon EDT) by clicking here. The video screen at the top will go live at the designated time.
Day 19 intention: For people at war and for peace in the world
For today’s Rosary Relay, we visit the Shrine of the House of the Virgin in Meryem Ana, Turkey. Tradition tells us that this is the place where the Virgin Mary was taken by St. John, the Apostle and Evangelist, and where she lived out her the rest of her earthly life.
While the Catholic Church has not pronounced on the authenticity of the shrine, it has been a popular pilgrimage site. Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have also visited the site.
The site was discovered in the 19th century, after Anne Catherine Emmerich, an Augustinian nun and mystic in Germany, had visions of the house that the Apostle John built for Mary. The bedridden nun’s description of the house was published in a book by the author Clemens Bretano:
Mary did not live in Ephesus itself, but in the country near it. … Mary’s dwelling was on a hill to the left of the road from Jerusalem, some three and half hours from Ephesus. This hill slopes steeply towards Ephesus; the city, as one approaches it from the south east seems to lie on rising ground … Narrow paths lead southwards to a hill near the top of which is an uneven plateau, some half hour’s journey.
In 1881, a French priest named Abbé Julien Gouyet set out to find the house based on Emmerich’s description. He discovered small stone building in what was ancient Ephesus. Years later it was found that the same ruins had for many years been venerated by a community down to be descended from the early Christians of Ephesus.
On October 3, 2004 Anne Catherine Emmerich was beatified by Pope John Paul II.
And today we celebrate...