Our Lady of the Rosary, Help of Christians

On October 7th, the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the yearly feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Known for several centuries by the alternate title of “Our Lady of Victory,” the feast day takes place in honor of a 16th century naval victory of Lepanto which secured Europe against Turkish invasion.

The battle of Lepanto was a perilous and decisive moment in European and world history. Troops of the Turkish Ottoman Empire had invaded and occupied the Byzantine Empire by 1453. For the next hundred years, the Turks expanded their empire westward. In 1571, three Catholic powers on the continent–Genoa, Spain, and the Papal States—formed an alliance called the Holy League, to defend their Christian civilization against Turkish invasion. Its fleets sailed to confront the Turks near the west coast of Greece on October 7, 1571.

Pope Saint Pius V attributed the victory to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was invoked on the day of the battle through a campaign to pray the Rosary throughout Europe. Some accounts say that the saint was granted a miraculous vision of the Holy League's stunning victory.

“Turkish victory at Lepanto would have been a catastrophe of the first magnitude for Christendom,” wrote military historian John F. Guilmartin, Jr., “and Europe would have followed a historical trajectory strikingly different from that which obtained.”

Adapted from an article published by: CNA