The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary was instituted to honor Mary for the Christian victory over the Turks at Lepanto on October 7, 1571. Pope St. Pius V and all Christians had prayed the Rosary for victory. The Rosary, or the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is one of the best prayers to Mary, the Mother of God.

Pope Benedict XVI invites all families to pray the rosary for the intentions of the Pope, the mission of the Church and peace. “It is as if every year Our Lady invited us to rediscover the beauty of this prayer, so simple and profound.” The rosary, a “contemplative and Christocentric prayer, inseparable from the meditation of Sacred Scripture,” is “the prayer of the Christian who advances in the pilgrimage of faith, in the following of Jesus, preceded by Mary,” said the Pontiff.

According to the 1962 Missal of Bl. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is also the feast of St. Mark, who succeeded St. Sylvester and was pope for eight months during Constantine’s reign. He zealously continued the great work of Church organization made possible by the period of freedom from persecution due to the Emperor’s conversion. He built two churches in Rome, one of which, the titulus Marci, has become the church of St. Mark, and still exists. He died in 336.