Our Lady of Victory/Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary -- Ora pro nobis

​Today, October 7th, the Roman Catholic Church celebrates a great feast, in fact, a “Solemnity”! We give thanks to the Blessed Virgin Mary for interceding for Christian Europe when Ottoman Muslim fleets off the shores of Greece engaged in battle against the Catholic Alliance in 1571. The Dominican Pope, St. Pius V, secured a Catholic League of the Papal States, Venice and Spain/Austria /Italian states. The Pope and his alliance sought to put an end to Ottoman/Muslim attacks and terrorising raids on Italian territories and the Croatian coast. In fact, the Ottomans were making inroads into Christian territories in the Mediterranean stretching across Cyprus attacking as far as Malta and by land into the north, in Hungary and Poland.

Pope, Pius V asked the faithful to pray the Rosary and ask for Mary to intercede for Christian Europe as Ottoman/Muslim armies continued to expand west. The attacks had been going on since the 8th century and the naval battle of Lepanto could have very well changed the religious demography of Europe. European Catholicism could have been eradicated similar to Christianity in North Africa -- all but disappeared (with the exception of Egypt). Like Byzantine Christian capital Constantinople in the 4th century, Rome was now the coveted prize of the of Catholic Christianity.
Wars are disturbing. They are a tragic reality of history when peoples, civilisations, attempt to defend themselves from aggressors. We won’t know the power of prayer, the intercessory role of Mary, if we forget out history. We will forget that we are indebted to the martyrs who died for the Christian faith as a testimony of their faith in Christ, the testimony they leave us of truth, love and courage. 

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