Will we see a million kids pray the Rosary in 2024?

ACN's annual prayer campaign is just days away, but there's still a long way to go before they get 1 million kids signed up to pray. Let's help them out!

On October 18, the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) will hold its annual prayer campaign “One Million Children Praying the Rosary.” This year’s iteration of the worldwide event will focus prayer intentions to ending world conflicts under the theme of “Rosary for Peace.”

The initiative originated in Caracas, Venezuela, when in 2005 a group of children were praying the Rosary at a wayside shrine. According to ACN, some of the mothers of the group felt the presence of the Blessed Mother while the children were praying and this brought to mind the words of St. Pio of Pietrelcina: “When one million children pray the Rosary, the world will change.”

ACN took up the idea and ran with it, forging it into a successful annual event that brings together young Catholics the world over in prayer. In the years since, ACN’s campaign has found great success, routinely registering hundreds of thousands of children to pray the Holy Rosary on the day.

In 2023, they exceeded one million participants by several thousand, but this year’s registration is still working on reaching half that – 446,439 children signed up to pray as of October 15.

Registering to pray the Holy Rosary on October 18 can be done at the ACN website. The process is as easy as citing your country of origin and who you will be praying with, be it individually, in a small group, or with an institution. An interactive map provided by ACN shows the distribution of participants in each country.

Pope Francis urges kids to participate!

Here’s what he said after praying the Angelus on October 13:

Next Friday, October 18, the “Aid to the Church in Need” Foundation is organizing the initiative “One million children praying the Rosary for peace in the world”. Thank you to all the boys and girls who are participating! Let us join with them and entrust to the intercession of Our Lady – today is the anniversary of her final apparition in Fatima – let us entrust to the intercession of Our Lady tormented Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan and the other populations who suffer because of war and any form of violence and misery.

The ACN website also provides participants with all the resources they might need to pray the Holy Rosary, including the prayers and the correct order of the Rosary. Furthermore, ACN provides pages from a children’s Bible comic depicting Christ’s Passion, which are also available in coloring book format. The pages are freely downloadable, to keep the kids engaged in their prayers and the faith after the day of prayer.

There’s still time to register to participate in “One Million Children Praying the Rosary,” before October 18. Take a moment to sign your kids up todayand help ACN (and Padre Pio) reach the goal of organizing a million kids to pray the Holy Rosary as one. In our world so plagued my conflict, the initiative is more urgent than ever.