By Lois Rogers |  Correspondent

Every Wednesday morning, a group of faithful from St. Catharine Parish, Holmdel dedicate their efforts to making simple plastic rosaries destined for the mission fields, hospitals, retirement homes and even circuses, around the U.S. and indeed the world.

Known around the parish as “The Rosary Makers,” many of the group of about 20 – mainly women – come to St. Catharine where they work on stringing the beads, indulging in social time as they go about their sacred task.

Others drop off completed rosaries they have made at home and pick up more supplies for the week ahead. Still others drop off supplies and pick up completed rosaries from home bound members.

“Loyal fingers” is how Rosemarie Sheer, an organizer of the ministry, describes the participants. Each week the ministry team sends out about 300 rosaries, answering requests from different organizations throughout the United States and all over the world.

Sheer said the rosaries have found their way into local nursing homes and hospitals as well as many states in the U.S.A. – mainly Texas, Arkansas and Florida. They have been distributed worldwide throughout South America, India, China and Russia. Retired seamen from around the globe pray with them, as do circus people on the road, she noted with pride.

By their calculations, the St. Catharine Parish Rosary Makers have sent out over 75,000 Rosaries since the group began participating in Our Lady’s Rosary Makers International, based in Louisville, Ky. The member-driven, non-profit lay apostolate was founded in 1949 by Xavierian Brother Sylvan Mattingly, who had a strong devotion to the Our Lady and a gift for making them.

Brother Sylvan founded the initiative, according to the international’s website, in order to meet the need for rosaries in the mission fields. Diverse in age, nationality, race and gender, OLRM members work alone or in guilds to provide the world with free rosaries.

The group came to St. Catharine’s by a circuitous route. Parishioner Louise Healy, who winters in Las Vegas, encountered the concept at the parish she was attending there. When Healy returned home, she asked Msgr. Eugene M. Rebeck, then pastor, for a chance to start a ministry there.

She was among the first to volunteer to learn and teach the simple string knot used to string the beads into decades. Sheer enjoyed relating that there is a lot of prayerful artistry involved in the process. “We use 30 different colors,” she said.

Each rosary maker can design the rosary according to her colorful vision, though those destined for prisons are, by request of the institutions, worked only with black beads and crosses, she said.

She’s happy that the group includes rosary makers of all ages. “We have some younger women, though it does tend to be mostly women of 40 and up,” said Sheer, adding that young people in Confirmation classes have joined the effort to help fulfill their service requirement.

“Many enjoy making the rosaries at home,” Sheer said. “It’s relaxing. It makes you feel good.”

And that’s very much in keeping with the sentiments on the page dedicated to the ministry on the parish website.

There, it notes: “there are 62 prayers said on a Rosary. Multiply that number by the number of rosaries sent to the missions and you can see that there are many, many prayers being sent to Our Lady in Heaven for personal intentions and world peace.”