A mass rosary prayer event is being planned in April along the coastline of Britain.
The Rosary on the Coast is scheduled for 3pm on Sunday, April 29, to mark 50 years since the Abortion Act came into effect. It follows similar events that drew many thousands of people in Poland and Ireland.
Organisers say the day is aimed at a “re-flourishing of the faith, for the grace to build a culture of life and for true peace to reign in the hearts of all peoples and nations”.
John Mallon, of Sancta Familia Media, said there had been a “very rapid growth of interest from all over the UK” since the initiative was announced last week.
He said that Catholics from Port Glasgow to the holy island of Lindisfarne to Jersey and Gibraltar had written expressing interest. “It’s really caught the imagination of people,” Mr Mallon said.
One priest, Fr Kevin Dow, wrote on Facebook that he and his parishioners would pray the rosary under the Forth Bridge outside Edinburgh.
Organisers are preparing a website with an interactive map of prayer locations to be launched on March 1, the feast of St David, patron of Wales.
They hope Catholics will gather not just on the coast of the British mainland but also on islands including Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, the Isle of Man, the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands.
Forty days of spiritual preparation will begin on March 19, the feast of St Joseph, under the protection of the saint, ending on April 27, the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act coming into force.
Among the major supporters of the initiative are Mgr John Armitage, rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, and Fr Paul Joseph, rector of the Marian shrine at Cardigan in Wales.
Mgr Armitage said a Walsingham group would gather on the beach in Wells. Many Catholics would be unable to reach the coast on the day, he said, but that did not matter. “The important thing is to pray the rosary on that day, at that time,” he said, whether by a river, at a parish church or at home.
“If we as a country can say the rosary at the same time it would be an incredibly powerful spiritual tool and foundation for the new evangelisation,” he said.
Mgr Armitage said that he saw the event as part of the spiritual preparation for the re-dedication of England as the Dowry of Mary planned for 2020. He said that a two-year spiritual preparation for the re-dedication would begin on the feast of the Annunciation next month.
In a video, Bishop John Keenan of Paisley urged Catholics to head to the coast on April 29, “imploring Our Lady to arouse a great renewal of Christian faith in our country”, which was being “tossed around in a dark and turbulent storm of aggressive secularism”.
“May God bless this important venture and begin the conversion and reconciliation of our isles,” he said.
The mass rosary prayer in Poland saw hundreds of thousands of Catholics pray the rosary around the country’s border. Poles gathered at 4,000 locations to commemorate the centenary of the apparitions at Fatima, and implore protection for their homeland and for the world.
In Ireland an estimated 30,000 people turned up for a similar event last November.
Watchdog backs priests’ certificates
Oversubscribed Catholic schools can use a certificate signed by a priest as proof of pupils’ faith, the Government’s watchdog has said.
The Office of the Schools Adjudicator had originally said the use of such a certificate, introduced by the Catholic Education Service (CES) for schools across the country, was “arbitrary and unfair”.
A spokesman for the CES praised the ruling, saying it showed its “strong working partnership” with the regulator.
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