Pope Leo XIV prayed the Rosary for peace with hundreds of children at the Lourdes Grotto in the Vatican Gardens on Thursday evening, 1 October. It opened a week of prayer that Aid to the Church in Need hopes will draw a million children worldwide. Vatican News put the crowd at about 1,200 to 1,300 people, and 700 of them were children from parishes and schools around Rome.

This is the first time the pontifical charity's annual "One Million Children Praying the Rosary" campaign has run for a whole week. It goes until Wednesday, 7 October, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, so parishes and schools can pick whichever day suits them.

Five decades, five languages

Vatican News reported that each of the five decades was prayed in a different language: Italian, Spanish, Urdu, German and Arabic. Children brought flowers to the grotto at the start of each decade, and a young boy helped the Pope carry a bouquet to the altar.

Photo: Timothy A. Gonsalves / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0), cropped

The week has named intentions. Vatican News listed them as the children of Ukraine and all victims of war, families in Lebanon, Syria and the Holy Land, persecuted Christians in Pakistan and around the world, reconciliation in South Sudan, and families in Cuba and Venezuela.

Before the prayer started, Cardinal Kurt Koch spoke to the children. He heads the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and is also president of ACN International. He told them that "together with Mary, they can bring the sufferings of the world to Jesus." Then he added: "It is precisely the voices of the youngest, who entrust themselves to him with confidence, that find a special welcome in the heart of God."

"As we contemplate the risen Christ, we ask that fear and hatred may not have the final word," the cardinal said.

What the Pope told the children

Pope Leo talked straight to the kids. OSV News reported that he said: "Yes, we love you, Jesus and Mary, and tonight we ask you for a special gift: peace for all the children of the world, especially for those living in war-torn areas in so many countries around the world. We do this through the prayer of the Holy Rosary, which is a simple prayer that everyone can recite."

He walked them through the Luminous Mysteries they were praying. Those are Jesus' baptism in the Jordan, the wedding at Cana, the proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration and the institution of the Eucharist. Vatican News reported that he asked the children to remember these moments, when Jesus "gave us wonderful gifts", and to "ask him with confidence, all united: Give us peace".

Then he put the size of the week into numbers. "Think about it," he said. "Fifty million 'Hail Marys' rising to Heaven from every part of the world and in every language, asking for peace, joining together like one enormous Rosary, embracing all the continents, peoples, and nations of the world."

He also tied the prayer to how they behave. Vatican News reported that he told the children praying together meant committing to act well at home, at school, in catechism class, with their parents and at play. "Prayers must always be accompanied by good deeds and acts of love," he said. That's OSV News' wording of the line. "That's how peace grows!"

Vatican News has put official highlights of the evening on its YouTube channel.

The appeal from Lourdes

The evening grew out of the Pope's trip to France. At the Angelus in Lourdes on Sunday, 27 September, the same day he met France's bishops at the shrine, he asked the whole Church to take up the Rosary for October. "I invite all the faithful and all Christian communities to pray the holy rosary throughout the coming month of October, with the particular intention that wars may cease and that peace may be established among peoples in conflict," he said. He finished the journey the next day, as we reported, when Metz closed the France trip.

ACN said in a statement dated 27 September that the appeal took up the very intention it's been promoting for more than two decades. The charity had invited the Pope to join the children in Rome, and it had also suggested taking the appeal to the wider Church. "The Pope is not only joining the children in prayer on 1 October," ACN said, "with his appeal today, he has extended the invitation to pray the Rosary for peace throughout October to the whole Church."

From Caracas to the world

The campaign started small. ACN says it began in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2005, when a group of children praying the Rosary sparked a wider movement. Its motto comes from words attributed to St Padre Pio: "When one million children pray the Rosary, the world will change." This year's theme is drawn from the message of Fatima: "In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph."

ACN Australia's write-up gives a feel for who's taking part. In the Kosti region of Sudan, where war is still causing enormous suffering, Fr Franck Mandozi told the charity that children from several parishes and schools would join in. "Indeed, Sudan and many parts of the world are in need of the intercession of Our Lady for peace in the world," he wrote.

In a Tsimané Indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon, Sister Patricia Alejandra Botello López said children were already praying the Rosary in Tsimané and Spanish. "But now we will strengthen these efforts in order to unite ourselves spiritually with you," she told ACN.

St Christopher's Parish in the Archdiocese of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, is gathering its children on Sunday, 4 October. The parish priest, Fr Charles Mafurutu, hopes to keep it going over the following weeks by travelling to remote Mass centres, some of them many kilometres away, to pray with the children there. In Paraguay, Radio Pa'i Puku plans to broadcast children praying the Rosary live from the parish of San Eugenio de Mazenod. Messages have also come in from Ethiopia, Mozambique and Sierra Leone.

World Rosary Day has joined the campaign for the first time this year. It sits alongside long-time partners the Shrine of Fatima, the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network and the World Apostolate of Fatima.

ACN asks groups to sign up on its campaign page, which keeps a map of who's praying where. It also offers free prayer kits with posters, colouring pages and comics in dozens of languages. The charity says it doesn't matter whether children pray the whole Rosary or a single mystery, alone or together. Every prayer counts.

The week of prayer runs through Wednesday's feast day, and the Pope's wider invitation covers all of October.