It was a crisp fall afternoon for Bradford’ s first ever Rosary Rally outside the Millennium Clock Tower on Saturday.
Since 2014, thousands of Catholics across North America take part and pray the rosary together in the Public Square Rosary Crusade.
It occurs on the Saturday closest to Oct. 13. to celebrate and honour the feast of the last apparition of Our Lady of Fatima and the Miracle of the Sun.
This year, Bradford was one of 570 Canadian groups who participated in the rally.
Event organizer Dom Duraes said his intent was to get as many people involved as possible.
At the stroke of noon, Duraes welcomed the crowd to the outdoor event with a prayer and song then invited Mayor Rob Keffer to say a prayer with the group.
Members of the community then took turns leading the group in praying the rosary in multiple languages, including English, French, Dutch, Filipino, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Slovak and Spanish.
“This is a multicultural country, so we wanted to have a lot of languages involved,” said one Holy Martyrs of Japan church member, Nancy Bobala.
There was also musical accompaniment for the popular song, Ave Maria, performed by resident and guitarist, Tom Kremer.
“It was a real privilege to be part of something like this,” said Kremer. “It lifts you up.”
Next year’s Rosary Rally will take place on Saturday Oct. 10, 2020. The goal is to have at least 700 groups in Canada participate.
