It is customary for a Rosary to be said prior to each Mass in every church and chapel during the month of October. Additionally, the prayer Ad te, beate Ioseph is recited after Masses or the Rosary is said again.
The Rosary is a powerful weapon against the forces of Satan.
How can one hope to turn away the forces of Satan, behind all evil and unrest in the world, without the help of Jesus and the Blessed Mother?
The feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary was originally called Our Lady of Victory, for on the 7th of October 1571, the naval forces of a Holy League, consisting of several maritime Catholic countries, met the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Lepanto. The Ottoman Turks were on the warpath in eastern Europe, and their ships had the run of the Mediterranean.
Pope Pius V organized the league to challenge Ottoman naval supremacy. The Holy League had a total of 208 ships to the Ottoman 251, and they were vastly outnumbered in terms of manpower, which on the Ottoman side included Christian slaves as oarsmen. The Spanish, who provided the bulk of the Christian naval forces, put the fleet under the command of the son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the famous Don Juan de Austria.
As the two fleets sought each other in the eastern Mediterranean, the Pope called for all Christian Europe to pray the Rosary for victory against the Ottomans.
The Battle of Lepanto was a decisive victory for the Holy League. Some ten thousand Christian slaves were freed, and Ottoman naval power was broken forever. It was the beginning of the end of the Ottoman military advance in Europe. The Church, and indeed the victorious fleet commanders themselves, attributed the victory at Lepanto to God through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Feast of Our Lady of Victory was established for this day in grateful thanksgiving. In 1573, Pope Gregory XIII altered the title of the feast to Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary. It was Pope Clement XI who extended the feast to the whole of the Latin Rite by inserting it into the General Roman Calendar in 1716.
Secularism, terrorism, atheism, and moral confusion, instigated by the enemies of Christ, can also be tuned back through the regular reciting of the Rosary.
Tradition holds that the Holy Rosary was given to Saint Dominic in 1214 by the Blessed Virgin Mary. This year, 2014, marks the 800th anniversary of the Holy Rosary.