Founding of His Ministries
Into the World and Hollywood
How could I pay back my debts to Our Lord, His Mother and my family? I prayed for an answer. Seven months after my ordination, while on retreat, God gave me the answer: the Family Rosary Crusade.
It was frightening. It was impossible. How could I do it? I spoke these words to Our Lord in a small chapel: "I can't do it. But My Lord, you can, and I ask You to do it." It was the best prayer I ever uttered. I had learned my third lesson: "Without God, I can do nothing." I took that lesson to heart.
And God answered me in a way I would never have dreamed: He sent the most famous Hollywood stars to do the work. These artists of stage, screen, radio and television used the mass media to make the world a village where families of all faiths and of none could come to know that "the family that prays together stays together�" and that "a world at prayer is a world at peace�." Human reason and wisdom would never have set the Family Rosary Crusade on the course it took in those beginning years. To Our Lord must go the credit for inspiring the best and only way to go: the mass media.
In 1945, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the largest radio network in the United States at that time, made available a half-hour to broadcast the Rosary. This was the opportunity of a lifetime. The program had to be good. It had to prove the Rosary for all its worth. To whom could I turn for help? Naturally, to Our Lady. She came through:
- Invite the most famous, loved and revered family to pray the Rosary;
- Ask the most famous Hollywood stars to join them;
- Have the most influential people in the US Church speak; and
- Choose the most fitting day to have the majority of Americans listening eagerly to a religious broadcast.
All of that happened:
- The day was Sunday, May 13, 1945: Mother's Day, Fatima Day and a day of thanksgiving for victory in Europe.
- Cardinal Spellman of New York was lined up to speak.
- The Sullivan family of Iowa, whose five sons had gone to their death together on a battleship that sank in the Pacific, led the Rosary.
- Bing Crosby agreed to participate.
The following day, the broadcast was acclaimed as the most touching program of all, and the Family Rosary Crusade was launched. What Bing Crosby did, others would do. Hundreds of them, Pat O'Brien, Loretta Young, Grace Kelly, James Cagney, gave their names, fame, time and talent to glorify the Rosary and dramatize its mysteries on film, on the radio and on television.
In 1947, the Diocese of London, Ontario, pioneered the diocesan crusades. From pulpits, classrooms, the media, giant rallies and house-to-house visitations, families came to know who Mary is and about the saving power of the Rosary. At the rallies, the outpouring of people was a measure of their hunger for the message. The multitudes reached the hundreds of thousands. In Manila in the Philippines, a million people came together to pray the Rosary. It happened again and again: in Bogot ... Bombay ... Johannesburg ... Madrid ... New York ... San Francisco ... Nairobi.
Unprecedented were the endorsements and encouragement given to the crusades by several popes and the Second Vatican Council. In 1987, Pope John Paul II said, "May the Rosary once more become the accustomed prayer of ... the Christian family."