logo
Record-setting rosary of boulders and chains in Massachusetts is so big you can walk through it

Record-setting rosary of boulders and chains in Massachusetts is so big you can walk through it

CBS News29-05-2025

There's a Catholic shrine in Massachusetts, west of Boston, that has a rosary so large it's actually made of boulders and chains.
The heart-shaped rosary at the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine in Holliston is 950-feet long. According to the World Record Academy, it's the largest sculpture of rosary beads on Earth.
"They decided to think big and to create a rosary not necessarily with a record of size in mind but a place that people could walk through," said Father Carl Chudy, the shrine's co-director. "Usually when we hold a rosary, we go through it with our hands. This is a chance for people to be on a kind of pilgrimage."
The rosary was built with large rocks taken from the construction of Interstate 495.
"It was the early 70's, they were just digging up for the project to build I-495," Father Chudy said. "They had gotten permission to come and take these large boulders from there, one by one in a pickup truck. Connecting the boulders, they implemented an anchor and chain that came from a battleship actually, the John F. Kennedy."
The heart-shaped rosary at the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine in Holliston, Massachusetts is 950-feet long.
CBS Boston
The shrine covers 20 acres in Holliston. The rosary is made up of 60 boulders and each one has a prayer in a different language.
"It's meant for all kinds of friends, Catholics, Christians of all types, but also peoples of other faiths," Fr. Chudy said.
For more information about the shrine and the rosary, visit their website.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Longtime priest at area Catholic college dies at 98
Longtime priest at area Catholic college dies at 98

Yahoo

time2 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Longtime priest at area Catholic college dies at 98

An area Catholic university is mourning the death of a beloved priest. [DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Xavier University announced the passing of Fr. Al Bischoff, S.J., on Friday. He was 98. Known as 'Father B,' the university said he 'made a profound impact' on the community. TRENDING STORIES: Deputies: Wood thrown at officers in high-speed chase; ends in wrong-way crash on I-75 Kohl's to close Butler County e-Fulfillment Center; over 700 employees impacted Injuries reported after car slams into Miami County home 'His deep care for each student, commitment to the Jesuit Catholic tradition and love for Xavier will never be forgotten,' the university wrote in a social media post. The university also called Father B a campus legend. Father B held several roles during his years at Xavier. He served as Emeritus Campus Minister for the Dorothy Day Center for Faith and Justice, as a longtime resident minister in Husman Hall, as Bellarmine Chapel Minister, where he presided over the 4:00 p.m. daily Mass, and as a longtime member of the Jesuit community. The university said in a statement online that he earned both his bachelor's degree and master's degree at Xavier. He was ordained in 1956 and began working full-time at Xavier in 1998. 'He was so popular with students that in 2003, a group of 130 alumni from 1969-1974 created a scholarship fund in his honor and surprised him with it on his 75th birthday,' the university said. [SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]

Long Island students travel to Normandy, honor long-forgotten alum who died in D-Day invasion
Long Island students travel to Normandy, honor long-forgotten alum who died in D-Day invasion

New York Post

time13 hours ago

  • New York Post

Long Island students travel to Normandy, honor long-forgotten alum who died in D-Day invasion

Chaminade High School students prayed for hours at the gravesite of a long-forgotten alum who heroically died after the D-Day invasion of Normandy during a recent trip to France. Officials at the Long Island Catholic school had just found out about the tragic death of 1935 graduate John J. McDonald a week before an annual spring trip to the country. They learned of the Mineola man killed in action two days after Allied forces stormed the beaches in June of 1944 — and found out he's one of the thousands laid to rest at the massive cemetery there. Advertisement 5 Chaminade High School students visited France and prayed at the graveside of an alum who died after the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Courtesy Chaminade High School 'We never even thought that one of our alumni was buried over in France,' Chaminade president Brother Thomas Cleary told The Post. 'We know he married, had no children…I don't know if anyone has ever visited his grave.' Advertisement The school scrambled to rearrange its Easter break travel plans and had all 30 students, taking turns in small groups, pray for nearly an hour at the grave of the Army Air Corps lieutenant who was shot down two days after D-Day. 'It really set in. This man, he's buried here — alone in a foreign country without his family,' said junior Andrew Kerr, who was part of the sobering moment that paid respect to the bombardier who flew 71 missions with the Ninth Air Force. 'I just can't even imagine what it would be like, that one day you just get up, go to war, you don't see your family again.' 5 John J. McDonald graduated Chaminade High School in 1935. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post Advertisement A hero's legacy — 81 years later Although many details about McDonald's life remain unclear, it is known that he was a track athlete at Chaminade who had a love for model airplanes before flying in one. McDonald even threw one he spent weeks building onto the school's football field during a homecoming game. 'You hear about it and you feel like it's so distant from you,' Kerr added. Advertisement 'But then you see his picture on the wall with the class of 1935 at school, and it all of a sudden it becomes 'wow, this really does relate to me.'' The 1918-born warrior first entered the Marines in 1937 and, after a medical discharge, re-enlisted in the Army in the thick of World War II. He wed while on leave in 1943. Brother Cleary is now trying to track down a member of McDonald's family to connect with and share the experience and learn more about him. 5 McDonald was a track athlete at Chaminade High School and loved planes. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post 5 Students Dylan Stampfel, Gianni Bono, Andrew Kerr and Maximilian Matuszewski posed for a portrait next to a plaque honoring McDonald. Heather Khalifa for the NY Post 'They were people like us, exactly like us,' junior Gianni Bono, whose brother is a Marine, said. 'It's an insane thing to think about.' Advertisement Being at the gravesite steps from the once bloody beaches of the Great Crusade to liberate Europe also gave the students a perspective not viewed in even an advanced placement curriculum. 'When you learn about this in history class, it's just a number,' said junior Dylan Stampfel. 5 Many details about McDonald's life remain unclear. Courtesy Chaminade High School 'But when you go there and you see the over 9,000 graves just lined up on the perfectly manicured lawn… it's very humbling.' Advertisement The teens also visited on a gorgeous day with polar opposite conditions to the notorious rain and fog that the beach storming is remembered for. 'What struck most of the students was that most of the beaches are now used recreationally,' said Marta Agosti, the school's world language chair who planned the trip. 'But I thought that is the best way in which you can say thank you to all the people that actually died there — so that we could continue with life.' Advertisement Junior Maximillian Matuszewski, who watched 'Saving Private Ryan' ahead of the trip, said Tom Hanks' core-shaking final words of 'earn this' have new meaning to him. 'It means to put my best foot forward always, and work as hard as I can,' he said. 'And to be thankful that I would never have to experience something that McDonald would.'

Peter H. Schwartz: Why nostalgia for the 1950s of ‘Leave it to Beaver' persists in America's religious right
Peter H. Schwartz: Why nostalgia for the 1950s of ‘Leave it to Beaver' persists in America's religious right

Chicago Tribune

time14 hours ago

  • Chicago Tribune

Peter H. Schwartz: Why nostalgia for the 1950s of ‘Leave it to Beaver' persists in America's religious right

Anyone looking to drench themselves in the 1950s nostalgia currently favored by the religious right in America should consider watching 'Leave It to Beaver' stoned. Which is what I did with an old friend in the 1980s while attending graduate school at the University of California-Berkeley. Nostalgia for the '50s — that land beyond time where Catholic traditionalists such as Notre Dame political theorist and post-liberal prophet Patrick Deneen dwell — idealizes imaginary communities of yore such as Mayfield, the setting for 'Leave it to Beaver,' where the values of faith, family, friends and flag all flourished. According to this narrative, late-stage liberalism and the globalization of markets, with their characteristic rootlessness, dissolve this communal existence. When I was at Berkeley in the 1980s, a large number of my childhood friends from Princeton, New Jersey, somehow found their way to the Bay Area. One afternoon, one of my Princeton buddies was house-sitting for an uncle in a Bay Area suburb. The uncle, whom I'll call Uncle Jim, had been my Cub Scout pack leader in Princeton when I was in elementary school. One sun-drenched afternoon, my friend and I settled into a couch, he rolled some joints and we flipped the TV to 'Leave It to Beaver' reruns. The series, on the air from 1957 and 1963, is a resonant symbol of '50s nostalgia, one to which conservative Catholics have returned as a template for modeling natural law. To Catholics who moved to the suburbs in the '50s and '60s, 'Leave It to Beaver' was a 'medieval morality play,' as Jerry Mathers, the Catholic actor who played young protagonist Theodore 'Beaver' Cleaver, put it. The show was a guide for young souls more tethered to television than to the suburban church. Michael De Sapio, writing in the online journal The Imaginative Conservative in 2017, states that, according to Mather, Beaver Cleaver 'repeatedly succumbed to temptation, suffered the consequences, and was guided back on the path of virtue.' In other words, these archetypal storylines and characters represent a moral imagination that 'elevates us to first principles as it guides us upwards towards virtue and wisdom and redemption,' in the words of American philosopher Russell Kirk. De Sapio continues: 'The emphasis on decorum and good manners in the Cleaver family conveyed a vision of the good, true and beautiful.' Mathers shared that the casting directors for the show selected him to play Beaver when they asked where he would prefer to be after they noticed he was uneasy at the audition. His guileless reply: his Cub Scouts den meeting. Notably, the mission of the Scouts is to 'prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.' Which returns us to Uncle Jim, my former Cub Scouts leader. He was an electrical engineer who ended his first marriage and moved to California in the 1970s, where he married a woman several decades younger and shed the trappings of his formerly decorous identity. 'Leave It to Beaver' mirrored and shaped the aspirations of millions of Catholics moving to the suburbs after World War II, and it has lingered as an idealized — and exclusive — depiction of the American Dream. The only nonwhite characters to appear in the show's 234 episodes were a Black man exiting a dairy truck in the episode 'Eddie, the Businessman' (1962) and a Black actress who plays a maid in the 1963 episode 'The Parking Attendants.' Within months of its final episode in June 1963 — following the March on Washington, D.C., in August led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the November assassination of President John F. Kennedy — 'Leave It to Beaver' had become a charming artifact of midcentury optimism, more a product of nostalgia and romantic imagination than a realistic model for America's future.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store