Unfortunately, she didn’t have strength to make rosaries a year ago about this time. “ ‘Why’ is an endless wheel that will torment you endlessly, so when there’s something in my life when I need strength, I make rosaries.” “Sometimes he helps me by bending pins” that make up the chain links of a rosary,” she said. Nealy makes the rosaries in her bedroom because her husband, who has stage four larynx cancer, sleeps in a specially-angled recliner in the living room. Some days, I make seven or eight and I’m thankful for my time with the Lord.” It’s like a one-on-one conversation with God and the Holy Spirit when I make them. “As time has gone on, it’s been very peaceful when I make them. “One day I decided, ‘I’m going to do this,’ ” she said. In a charming German accent, she said that the desire to learn how to make rosaries “had always been growing in me. It was not until about 20 years ago that Nealy, 67 and a mother of three, learned how to make rosaries. The baptized Catholic carried her love for the rosary with her to Morgantown, where she moved in 1974 after marrying her husband James Michael Nealy. “From the time I left the orphanage, the rosary has been part of my life and will always be.

The structure of the Church gave me inner peace and acceptance of the things God sometimes brings to you. But for Marie Nealy “it was the best part of growing up. ‘I feel like this is my calling’īeing raised in an orphanage in Germany. Following are the stories of their love for the rosary and what led them to share that love in a creative way. To honor this popular Catholic devotion, The Criterion interviewed these four individuals.

7, October is known as the month of the rosary. With the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary taking place each year on Oct. For one, it took the form of writing a young adult fiction book. Their stories are quite different, but they each share one thing in common: a special love for the rosary.įor three of them, that translates into making rosaries. A mother of five who found herself the sole source of financial support for her family. A Benedictine sister who teaches middle school religion. NASHVILLE-A woman raised in a Catholic orphanage in Germany.

‘Such a powerful prayer’ Rosary makers and an author creatively share their love of the rosaryīenedictine Sister Nicolette Etienne holds her favorite rosary, one she purchased in Lourdes, France, while on a trip made possible by the Holy Name School Class of 2012, which surprised her with the trip for her 50th birthday.

A single bead by stephanie engelman