Karen Granucci and Rosi Ajjam didn’t know each other when they were seated at the same table for the popular Walking with Purpose program at Church of the Resurrection in Rye.
But they soon learned they were on a similar path.
Granucci had been making rosaries for five years.
“Three a.m., watching ‘Murder She Wrote’,” she chuckled.
On her own quiet mission, she left rosaries wherever people might need them, including popular gathering places for veterans, in area churches, and for her CCD students.
Granucci, a church member since 1965, lives in Harrison and is a 1973 graduate of Rye High School, where she and other alumni are fierce tailgaters at every Rye High School/Harrison football game.
Ajjam, who lives with her husband, Daniel, and three children in Greenhaven, was just transitioning to a new pursuit after 25 years as a marketing and corporate executive. She also felt a calling to make rosaries for those in need around the world. Using her marketing skills, she built her own company, Mater Rosae, with the tagline “A Rosary in Your Hands … Always.”
She makes rosary rings with 10 raised dots and a tiny cross, which enables people to recite the rosary anywhere.
From that table in the church, the women joined forces to form “The Rosary Makers of Rye.” Together, they taught the art to students who earned community service hours, especially as they approached confirmation, to senior citizens at Aging Gracefully, and to anyone who wanted to learn.
In May, Granucci was listening to the Catholic Channel on SiriusXM Radio, and heard a new call for rosaries. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, whom she remembered hearing as a girl, was to be beatified in St. Louis on Sept. 24. There was a public call to help make World Mission Rosaries for the 75,000 people expected to attend the beatification. Sheen himself designed the World Mission Rosary in 1951, saying, according to Granucci, “We must pray, and not for ourselves, but for the world … to this end, I have designed the World Mission Rosary.”
Granucci thought their purposes were aligning. The Rosary Makers of Rye got to work.
To date, Granucci and Aijam have made more than 300 rosaries with help from sisters at the Church and the the Pontifical Mission Societies USA. Sister Zelide has gathered many of the materials and has assisted with the project. And Juan Enrique Torruella, a faithful attendee at morning Mass and one of the church’s lectors, learned of the project and underwrote the cost of the materials.
They have set a goal of 1,000 rosaries before Sept. 15. The rosaries will be sent to a central location in Peoria, Ill., to be blessed before going on to St. Louis for the beatification.
The rosaries designed by Archbishop Sheen appear in “five decades” with “five different bead colors.” Each represents a region of the world and, Granucci said, “to remind those who pray to bring the needs of its people before God.”
According to the World Mission Rosary Drive, green represents the forests and grasslands of Africa, red symbolizes the fire of faith that brought missionaries to America, white represents Europe’s association with the Holy Father and the heart of the Catholic Church, blue symbolizes the oceans and islands surrounding the Pacific region, and yellow represents Asia, symbolizing the morning light of the East.
Torruella, who lives in Harrison with his wife, Stephanie, and their two children, said he has always been impressed with the way Bishop Sheen embraced early television and preached about issues that still mean so much today.
“This resonated with me,” he said of the rosary project. “A thousand rosaries means a thousand people are praying the Rosary. It is a way to do our part.”
Gathering at the church and in local Rye homes, including that of Cindy Dapolite on Henry Street, the rosary makers are rushing to meet the Sept. 15 deadline. They welcome others to join, noting that making the World Mission Rosaries is easily learned, with materials and even a training video provided.
Susan Romeo-Riordan, parishioner and member of the Rye Women’s Interfaith Council, said the project “demonstrates the thread that binds us.”
Granucci and Ajjam are logging their journey of these past months together. In a joint statement they said, “Every rosary we make is more than a string of beads; it is a prayer placed into someone’s hands. As we make each World Mission Rosary, we are reminded that our faith reaches far beyond our own parish and our own lives. We are praying for the whole world, one bead, one prayer, and one heart at a time.”
