WHY THE CONFRATERNITY OF THE HOLY ROSARY?
A RELIGIOUS AWAKENING – THE POWER OF THE ROSARY:
In 1867 Father Luc Desilets, the pastor at Cap-de- la-Madeleine from 1864 until his death in 1888, had an astonishing experience. Upon investigating a noise he had heard in the church, he found a small pig chewing on a rosary. This was for him a shocking experience. He was saddened by the fact that people were no longer praying the rosary. He remembered the Confraternity of the Rosary that had been established in the parish in 1694. He then consecrated himself to the Blessed Mother and re-introduced the devotion of the rosary in the parish, praying the rosary after each Mass and encouraging his parishioners to pray the rosary at home. Soon more and more parishioners started coming to church; eventually the church was too small and a larger church was required.
As Pope Leo XIII said in his apostolic constitution on the Confraternity, "whenever a person fulfills his obligation of reciting the Rosary according to the rule of the Confraternity, he includes in his intentions all its members, and they in turn render him the same service many times over." (Ubi Primum (1898), n1)
1897 Encyclical on the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary by Pope Leo XIII
St. Louis de Montfort was ordained a priest in June 1700. He had a great desire to go on foreign missions. In fact he showed great interest in the new French colony of Canada! His spiritual director advised against it. In November 1700 he joined the Third Order of the Dominicans and asked permission not only to preach the rosary, but also to form rosary confraternities.
St. John Vianney once said, “If anyone has the happiness of being in the Confraternity of the Rosary, he has in all corners of the world brothers and sisters who pray for him.”
"The Rosary Confraternity is a spiritual association, the members of which pray the entire rosary during the course of a week. They form a union of the faithful in heaven and on earth who, along with their own intentions, include the intentions and needs of all its members." (found on the Dominicans Rosary Confraternity web page)