Over 3,000 Catholics gather for rosary pilgrimage at National Shrine Basilica in Washington, DC

More than 3,000 Catholics came together at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, for the second annual Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage.

They joined Dominican friars in the basilica on 28 September “to celebrate the Virgin Mary and her gift of the holy rosary”, reports the Catholic News Agency (CNA).

College students, families with young children, alongside older Catholics filled the basilica to pray the rosary in the upper church. The event also included a Mass, adoration and confession, lectures about the rosary and Mary, as well as an outdoor concert by the Hillbilly Thomists, a folk band made up of Dominican friars.

The day-long pilgrimage, organised by the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph, saw an increase in participation from last year. This was helped by the organisers opening the event to more faithful participants by providing concurrent Spanish-language worship held in the crypt on the lower level of the basilica.

Furthermore, more priests were on hand for confession, while the evening concert was a new addition to the pilgrimage.

Many of those gathered had also joined the Dominicans in a nine-month rosary novena leading up to the pilgrimage that is timed to coincide just before the month of the rosary, which begins in October.

Attendees at the event who spoke with CNA emphasised their love for the rosary and desire for Catholic community.

Pat Ober, who heard about the pilgrimage through her parish, told CNA that she enjoys the community aspect of such gatherings, explaining: “It’s really nice to get pumped up, seeing other people [praying together].”

One of the lectures, given by Dominican Father James Sullivan, broke down the various mysteries upon which Catholics meditate when praying the rosary.

He encouraged the faithful to consider the Annunciation – when the archangel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that she will give birth to the son of God (and also the first joyful mystery of the rosary) – “as a gateway to the rosary”, which he said is “the scenic view we really need in our lives”.

He added: “When we pray the rosary…we stop, we look at a mystery. [We think] about what that mystery means in [our lives]. [We] can imagine the graces that flowed from that mystery.” 

The four sets of mysteries upon which Catholics meditate when praying the rosary – the joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious – all focus on different aspects of our spiritual lives, Sullivan said.

The basilica, which can sit up to 3,500, is not only the largest church in the US, it is one of the largest church buildings in the world – at 139 metres long, the nave is longer than that of Cologne Cathedral in Germany.

“It is a place that breathes timeless Marian devotion and does not overwhelm visitors, despite its size, but rather draws them into prayer,” Franzisker Harter wrote in a previous article that appeared in the Catholic Herald about Catholicism in Washington, DC, and which detailed the history of the basilica.

In 1847, Pope Pius IX named Our Lady as Patroness of the United States under the title of the Immaculate Conception. In 1920, construction began on the national shrine, which Pope John Paul II elevated to the rank of basilica minor in 1990.

Built with stone, brick, tiles and marble in the Romanesque-Byzantine style and decorated with countless mosaics, the imposing church can hold its own alongside the venerable buildings of Europe, despite its tender age, Harter notes.

It contains more than 80 chapels, with depictions and statues of the Virgin Mary from all over the world. The idea behind this was to depict America’s society as a melting pot of ethnicities and nationalities.

The church attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and visitors from all over the country every year, and who can count on a holy mass and confession to be occurring at almost any time of day.

As Harter describes in her article, the basilica is surrounded by a thriving and dynamic Catholic community which co-exists in the US capital city that is far better known for its politics, role as the seat of the US government and its geo-political heft and influence on the rest of the world.

It means that Washington, DC, is not only the capital city of the most powerful country in the world, but it is also, unbeknownst to many, the scene of what Harter describes as “the spiritual renewal of the North American continent”.

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Photo: The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington,DC, 21 July 2019. The National shrine is the largest Catholic church in the United States and in North America, and the tallest habitable building in Washington, DC. (Photo credit DANIEL SLIM/AFP via Getty Images.)

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