Leo XIV calls for the Rosary to be prayed all October for peace

On Sunday 27 September 2026, on the meadow of the shrine of Lourdes, facing the grotto of Massabielle, Leo XIV celebrated an open-air Mass before some 150,000 faithful according to the organisers, among them nearly 7,000 sick, surrounded by a thousand priests, 150 bishops, around a hundred deacons and 1,500 volunteers. At the close of the Mass, at the Angelus, he invited all the faithful and all Christian communities to recite the Rosary throughout the month of October, for one precise intention: that wars may cease and that peace may be established among the peoples in conflict. He asked that this prayer be accompanied by concrete acts of penance and mercy, and by a commitment to dialogue and reconciliation.

He also summoned, on 1 October at 5 p.m., children to the Lourdes grotto in the Vatican Gardens to recite the Rosary for peace together: seven hundred to a thousand children are expected, in a week of prayer that culminates on 7 October, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.

The Rosary, October's weapon of peace

That October should be the month of the Rosary is no improvised devotion: it is a prescription of the Church. On 1 September 1883, in the encyclical Supremi apostolatus officio, Leo XIII ordered that every year, from 1 October to 2 November, the beads be recited publicly in the churches, precisely to obtain from the Mother of God the help of Christendom in its trials. He returned to it in some ten encyclicals, so much so that he has been called the pope of the Rosary.

The feast of 7 October tells its reason. Instituted by Saint Pius V under the title of Our Lady of Victory after the battle of Lepanto, on 7 October 1571, it ascribes to the Rosary, recited that day by all Christendom, the deliverance of Europe. The Rosary is no lukewarm prayer: it is the weapon the Church places in the hands of the humble when the powerful make war.

The measure

On this point, the appeal made at Lourdes matches exactly what the Church has always taught. To pray the Rosary in October for peace, and to accompany it with acts of penance and mercy, is to take up the Leonine discipline and the lesson of Lepanto: peace among peoples is not obtained first by treaties, but by the conversion of hearts and the intercession of the Virgin. That this appeal sets children in the front rank, on 7 October, is only one more fidelity, for tradition has always held the Rosary to be the prayer of the simple.

By the same measure we weigh the homily preached on the meadow. Calling for conversion “today, not tomorrow” and presenting Massabielle as a “sanctuary of Christian hope” against the currents that claim to “redefine the value of human life in the face of illness, suffering or old age,” the pope recalled the Virgin's word to Bernadette: “I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the other.” This is the constant doctrine of the last things, which Lourdes has never ceased to preach.

What to hold on to

For the faithful, the instruction is simple and ancient: take up the beads, and hold to them all month. Not as a sentimental gesture, but as the Church has commanded since Leo XIII, at least one decade each day, for the intentions of peace, joined to penance. Where an appeal of today restates the tradition without diluting it, there is nothing to correct: there is only to obey.

Sources. Leo XIII, encyclical Supremi apostolatus officio (1 September 1883), on the public recitation of the Rosary in the month of October; Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on prayer and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Dom Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, at 7 October, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, instituted by Saint Pius V after Lepanto (1571).