The Interactive Rosary

How to pray the Rosary

The Rosary is a meditation on the life of Christ, prayed through the eyes of His mother. The beads keep count so the mind can rest on the mysteries. This is the order the interactive Rosary above follows:

1. Holding the crucifix, make the Sign of the Cross and pray the Apostles’ Creed.
2. On the first large bead, pray the Our Father.
3. On the next three small beads, pray a Hail Mary on each, traditionally for an increase of faith, hope, and charity.
4. Pray the Glory Be.
5. Announce the first mystery, then pray the Our Father on the large bead.
6. On the ten small beads, pray ten Hail Marys while meditating on the mystery.
7. Pray the Glory Be, and, if you wish, the Fatima Prayer. That completes one decade. Announce the next mystery on the large bead and repeat for all five decades.
8. After the fifth decade, pray the Hail, Holy Queen and the closing prayer, and end with the Sign of the Cross.

The words of each prayer are also on our Prayers & Devotions page.

The twenty mysteries

Each decade is paired with an event, or “mystery,” from the lives of Jesus and Mary. In his apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae (2002), St. John Paul II added the five Luminous Mysteries and proposed praying the sets on these days, while noting that this is a suggestion and not a rule (n. 38).

Praying it well

“To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ,” wrote St. John Paul II (Rosarium Virginis Mariae 3). The Hail Marys are the steady background; the heart of the prayer is the mystery. A few habits help:

• Read the Scripture first. Before each decade, read the passage or the short verse shown above, and picture the scene.
• Go slowly. One decade prayed with attention is better than five rushed. You can pray a decade at a time through the day and resume here.
• Bring someone with you. Offer the Rosary, or each decade, for a person or need.
• Ask for the fruit. Each mystery traditionally has a virtue, its “fruit.” Ask for that grace as you pray.
• Pray it together. The family Rosary is one of the Church’s most recommended devotions. When praying aloud, one person leads the first half of each prayer and the others answer with the second.

A short history

Tradition links the Rosary with St. Dominic (d. 1221), and the Dominicans did much to spread it. Historians describe a longer growth: monks prayed the 150 Psalms, and lay people who could not read them took up 150 Our Fathers or Hail Marys in their place, known as “Our Lady’s Psalter.” In the 1400s, short meditations on the life of Christ were attached to the beads. The Dominican preacher Alan de la Roche founded the first Rosary confraternities.

Pope St. Pius V gave the Rosary its classic form of fifteen mysteries in 1569. On October 7, 1571, the Christian fleet defeated the Ottoman navy at Lepanto while confraternities across Europe prayed the Rosary. Pius V instituted a feast of Our Lady of Victory, which Gregory XIII renamed the feast of the Holy Rosary. It is kept today as the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7. Pope Leo XIII wrote a long series of encyclicals on the Rosary and dedicated the month of October to it in 1883.

Our Lady prayed the Rosary with St. Bernadette at Lourdes (1858). At Fatima (1917) she asked the children to pray it every day for peace, and on October 13 she called herself “the Lady of the Rosary.” In 2002, St. John Paul II added the Luminous Mysteries, the mysteries of Christ’s public life, so the Rosary now has twenty mysteries in all. Read more on our Marian Apparitions and Mary, Mother of God pages.

The Rosary indulgence

The Church grants a plenary indulgence for praying the Rosary devoutly in a church or oratory, or together as a family, religious community, or association of the faithful. In other circumstances a partial indulgence is granted (Enchiridion of Indulgences, grant 17). For the plenary indulgence:

• Five decades are enough, but they must be prayed without interruption.
• The vocal prayer must be joined to meditation on the mysteries.
• When praying in public, the mysteries are announced in the manner of approved local custom.
• The usual conditions also apply: sacramental Confession, Holy Communion, prayer for the intentions of the Holy Father, and complete detachment from all sin, even venial.

The “Prayers for the Holy Father’s intentions” option in the interactive Rosary adds that prayer at the end. To learn more about Confession, see our guide to Confession & Reconciliation.