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"Give a million families with Rosaries in their hands, uplifted to Mary," said Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty in his last sermon before being imprisoned by the Communists in Hungary. "They will be a military power, not against other people, but for all mankind ... for their welfare, their hearing... ."

One of the least told stories of modern history is how devotion to Our Blessed Mother through the Rosary has shaped and altered the course of Christian civilization. Yet, the evidence is clear, from as early as the days of St. Dominic down to the 1960s when the women of Brazil marched through the streets of Rio de Janeiro with Rosaries in their hands praying for the deliverance of their country from Communism, the Rosary has been winning decisive battles for freedom and against enemies of the Church.

Let's look back in time and discover the power of the Rosary and the tole it has played in the course of human events. And where better to begin than during the 12th century when a strange heresy was sweeping throughout Europe and gaining powerful followers. Advocates of this evil movement called themselves Albigenses and they taught that marriage was sinful; that husbands and wives should desert their homes and families; that man's body was created by Satan himself; that concubinage was a virtue and suicide praiseworthy.

Like wildfire, Albigensianism spread throughout Southern France accompanied by killing, burning and destruction. The Albigenses, notes Rosary historian John Johnson, "were like the Communists of today in very many respects. The Albigenseian movement was not just another heresy; it was one of those periodic assaults of essential evil on the very basis of morality and civilization. It is hard to see how men can be carried away in such large numbers by sheer diabolism, but there it is--a historical fact. When we see what the Albigensian movement had done to men in its day we can better realize what Communism is today."

Fortunately for the Church, living in those turbulent days was a great saint-to-be named Dominic, a staunch opponent of the Albigensian heretics and their powerful followers. Among Dominic's supporters was Simon de Montfort, a fervent advocate of the Rosary. One day a small Christian task force of about 800 men led by de Montfort locked in combat with a well-armed and disciplined army of 40,000 Albigenses near the city of Muret. The Albigenses were severely defeated in that battle. It was a turning point in history and the beginning of the end of the Albigensian heresy and the reconversion of those who had been led astray.

The Battle of Muret was indeed a victory of the Rosary. The age that followed was one of peace and progress and a true Renaissance of learning. Faith blossomed, the human mind was set free and magnificent cathedrals as well as impressive universities sprang up throughout Europe.

Today it is the evil of Communism that threatens the world, suppresses freedom and persecutes all who believe in God. But beginning in the 7th century, and for a thousand years that followed, it was the plague of the Moslem sword that threatened Christian civilization.

It began with the birth of Mohammed in the year 575. An orphan raised by an uncle, Mohammed served as a camel caravan leader until he was about 25 years old. At that time he married a wealthy older woman and became the manager of her fortune. Like other Arabs of his country, Mohammed did not profess any particular religious creed. So he invented a religion of his own and presented it to his wife.

The people of Mecca did not accept Mohammed's religion at first and he was forced to flee to Medina in 622. Seven years later, during which time he made many converts, he returned to the "Holy City" as "the great prophet Allah (God)". He died there in the year 632. Allah (Mohammed) left behind his Moslem gospel, the Koran, which promised a paradise of eternal pleasures, including sensual pleasures, to all who fulfilled the Koran's practices and helped to spread Mohammed's religion by the sword.

Under Allah's banner, "Paradise is in the shadow of the sword," the Moslems set out in the year 634 to conquer the world. Within a year they had captured Syria and Damascus. Three years later, they captured Jerusalem. By 643, after only nine years of "Holy War," Islam had conquered in Asia and Africa a territory half the size of Europe.

During the summer of 711, the followers of Allah crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and rapidly conquered what is today Spain and Portugal. In 719 they rode into France looting and burning. It was not until the year 732 that Allah's followers, called Saracens by the Franks, met in battle on the hills of the Poitou the great Christian leader and grandfather of Charlemagne, Charles Martel. Martel and his warriors, freemen who had voluntarily sworn their allegiance to him, prepared themselves for battle by prayer, Holy Mass, Communion and special prayers to the Virgin Mary. The battle was bloody, but by nightfall the Saracens had been defeated and their chief killed. Leaving their tents behind, the defeated followers of Allah fled back across the Pyrenees.

Charles Martel's victory at Poitiers definitely stopped the Moslem invasion of western Europe. In the east Christians held firm against attacks of the Moslems until 1453. In that year, Mohammed II threw huge assaults against Constantinople and by the evening of May 29 the Byzantine capital fell.

Pope Nicholas V had tried in vain to organize a crusade to save Constantinople, but his voice went unheard by the Christian nations of Europe. On the contrary, kings and princes were busy at the time engaged in arranging trade agreements with the followers of Mohammed--the same type of "trade agreements" being conducted today by free world nations with the Communists in Moscow and Peking. The Moslems and Turks, like the Communists today, signed such agreements but broke them whenever it suited them. Under such a method, the honest partner was gradually conquered by the dishonest partner.

By 1571 the Moslems were firmly installed in Europe. Their ships ruled the Mediterranean Sea from the Strait of Bosporus to the Strait of Gibraltar and constantly preyed on Christian vessels unless they flew the French flag.

Pope Pius V, in the last year of his papacy in 1571, tried to rally the nations of Europe to join in a Holy League to stop and roll back the Moslem enemy which threatened the entire continent.

Spain, whose King Philip II was also King of Austria, responded favorably. The Moslems were then engaged in the conquest of Cyprus, an island belonging to the Republic of Venice. Leading Venetian officials would have preferred to have worked out some peaceful-coexistence agreement with the Sultan, but under the crusading influence of Saint Pius V, they decided to join the Holy League along with the republics of Genoa and Lucca and the dukes of Savory, Parma, Ferrara and Urbino. The Papal fleet was of course part of the Holy Alliance.

Pius V asked Philip to appoint Don John of Austria, the 25-year old son of Emperor Charles V, as commander-in-chief of a planned expedition against the Moslems. After receiving the banner of the Holy League from the Pope, through Cardinal Granvalla, Don John's fleet set sail from Genoa for Naples on June 26, 1571.

Few historians mention that just before the departure, Philip II presented Don John with a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe which she had caused to be miraculously imprinted on the cloak of the Indian peasant Juan Diego in Mexico 40 years before. Don John placed the picture in the chapel of the admiral-vessel, the Genoese John Andrew Doria, asking for Mary's protection of his expedition.

On September 16, the Christian fleet put to sea. Don John anchored off Corfu where he learned that the Moslems had leveled entire towns and villages and then retreated to the coast of Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth. At dawn on October 7, at the entrance to the Gulf of Patras, the Christian and Moslem fleets finally came face to face for the battle of Lepanto. The wind and all military factors favored the Moslems, but Don John was confident. He boarded a fast ship for a final review of his fleet. He shouted encouraging words to the men and they shouted back. After Don John returned to his own position, the wind mysteriously changed to the advantage of the Christian fleet. First-hand witnesses wrote about this moment as a most dramatic turn-of-events resulting from an "unknown factor".

At that very moment, at dawn on October 7, 1571--as Vatican Archives later revealed--Pope Pius V, accompanied by many faithful, was praying the Rosary in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. From dawn to dusk the prayers continued in Rome as the Christians and the Moslems battled at Lepanto. When it was all over the Moslems had been defeated. Of some 270 Moslem ships, at least 200 were destroyed. The Turks also lost 30,000 men white Christian casualties numbered between 4,000 and 5,000. The Rosary had won a great military victory.

Like all truly great military leaders who hate war and love peace, Don John retired after his victory at Lepanto. He died a few years later at the age of 31. Another who took part in the great battle of Lepanto, Miguel de Cervantes, lived longer to write his famous tribute to Christian chivalry, Don Quixote.

Following the great Christian victory at Lepanto, Pope St. Pius V declared that henceforth a commemoration of the Rosary would be a part of the Vatican's Mass on every October 7. His successor, Pope Gregory XIII, went further. In 1573 he established the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary--to be celebrated at all Churches which had specific altars dedicated to the Rosary. In 1671 Pope Clement X extended observance of the feast to all of Spain.

Only 12 years later in 1683 the Moslems again swept into Europe. With 200,000 men, they laid siege to Vienna. After months of valiant resistance by a small garrison, the city was relieved by an army under John Sobieski, King of Poland. The Rosary, to which the King was dedicated, was again instrumental in a military victory. Pope Innocent XI consecrated September 12 of that year to the Holy Name of Mary.

The Moslem hordes were hurled back yet again at Peterwardein in Hungary by Prince Eugene on the Feast of Out Lady of the Snows, August 5, 1716. As a result of this victory, Pope Clement XI extended the Feast of the Rosary to the Universal Church.

The Church is always very cautious about supernatural visitations, but after many years of investigation it now recognizes that the Blessed Mother has appeared at least twice in recent history to offer the Rosary as a weapon against the enemies of peace and freedom.

In 1858 a sickly tittle French girl, Bernadette Soubirous, wandered along the banks of Gave River near Lourdes while her friends gathered firewood. Coming upon a large upjutting rock called Massabielle, at that time the city dump, Bernadette's eyes were dazzled by the sight of a beautiful woman dressed in the rays of the sun and carrying a Rosary. The woman called herself the Immaculate Conception and offered the Rosary to Bernadette and the world.

Years later, near the small Portuguese village of Fatima, three small peasant children met the same beautiful woman who told them she was the Lady of the Rosary. It was 1917--the same year the Bolsheviks overthrew the legitimate democratic government and established a totalitarian "dictatorship of the proletariat" in Russia. What did the three small children of Fatima know about the Bolsheviks and events transpiring thousands of miles away in Russia? Absolutely nothing. Nevertheless the beautiful woman told the little ones, and it has come down to us, that we should pray the Rosary for the conversion of Russia and world peace.

Appearing in Fatima, Out Lady of the Rosary came just before the world shattering events that followed the year 1917--the establishment and growth of international Communism and its enslavement of some 20 Christian nations. It was only much later that the world came to realize the implications of what Mary had said at Fatima about Russia--that if the message of the Rosary went unheeded, Communism would spread throughout the entire world.

Lucky for us, the promise of Fatima still stands. When enough people have dedicated themselves to praying the Rosary, as Our Lady asked, Russia will be converted and peace will come to the world. Combine the Rosary with a widespread return to the principles of Christian living, and we could see that day in our own lifetime.

If more reminders are needed to demonstrate the power of the Rosary, then consider the life of St. Louis de Montfort. J.G. Shaw, in the authoritative study of The Story of the Rosary refers to St. Louis' book, The Wonderful Secret of the Most Holy Rosary, as follows:

"It is remarkable that its author, St. Louis de Montfort, actually spent his apostolic life using the Rosary to combat the Jansenists exactly as the tradition describes St. Dominic using it to defeat the Albigenses. St. Louis, in other words, provides a historically verifiable proof of that power of the Rosary over heresy which is usually exemplified by the legends of St. Dominic."

St. Louis de Montfort died in 1716, the year Pope Clement extended the Feast of the Rosary to the universal Church. He was canonized in 1947 as the saint of true devotion to Our Lady. ln his writings, St. Louis--who called the Rosary "truly great, sublime and divine" and who said "heaven itself has given it to you"--warned that enemies of the Church "would rather carry a serpent on them than ... a Rosary."

The Rosary, in fact, has played a prominent role in some of history's most bitter conflicts. For example:

• in the 1600s the British Parliament passed repeated ordinances against possession and use of the Rosary. In 1616, a Catholic named Thomas Atkinson was hanged, drawn and quartered for possessing a Rosary.
• In Communist China, as many missionaries will testify, a Rosary is sufficient evidence to cause its possessor to be arrested as an enemy of the state.

• The Red dictator Fidel Castro, gathering forces in the hills of Cuba, displayed Rosaries to deceive Catholics into believing that he was not a Communist.

The Rosary is the weapon Our Lady said should be used to counter the evils of the world when she appeared at Fatima. To honor Christ's Mother the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, went to Fatima on May 13, 1982--the exact anniversary of the day Our Lady first appeared to Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta in 1917--and the Holy Father consecrated the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This was also the same date, one year earlier that Pope John Paul II was the target of an assassination attempt in St. Peter's Square, which appears to have been directed by agents of Communist Rumania's secret police.

In 1984, Pope John Paul wrote to all of the bishops of the world asking them to join him in an Act of Entrusting the world to Our Blessed Mother, Queen of the Rosary, on Saturday, March 24, 1984, the Feast of the Annunciation, or on the following Sunday, March 25. In this Act of Entrusting, the Holy Father did not mention Russia in particular, but according to His Eminence John Joseph Cardinal Carberry of St. Louis, the USSR was indeed included in the Act. Cardinal Carberry explains as follows:

"Throughout the Act of Entrusting to Out Lady the word Russia is not used, but on the other hand, [Pope John Paul II] speaks in a way that one could see Russia included such as when he says, 'In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations which particularly need to be thus entrusted and consecrated.' In another instance he writes in this Act of Entrusting, 'We wish to unite ourselves with our Redeemer in his consecration for the world and for the human race, which in his divine Heart, has the power to obtain pardon and to secure reparation.' (One could really see Russia included in the reference to the human race.)

"Further, the following words of the Act of Entrusting could be seen to include Russia, for it reads: 'The power of this consecration lasts for all time and embraces all individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil that the spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened in our times, in the heart of man and in his history.'