I came across this article today about what some Carlsbad, New Mexico Knights are doing in the distribution of over 6,000 rosary rings to our troops overseas. You can read the rest of the artical here: Rosaries to military in Iraq; just a wonderful story, the portion I found most interesting was some of the history behind the rosary “Ring”, here is an excerpt:
Ring rosaries became a very special symbolic Christian item since religious persecution of Catholics began in England and Ireland under Henry VIII in 1540 and continued until about 1731.
During what has been called the Penal Times, death became the common penalty for attending a Roman Catholic Mass or harboring a priest or gathering to recite the rosary. Small, easily hidden rosaries were used to avoid detection.
The ring rosaries have since become known as soldiers’ rosaries, because soldiers often took them into battle, most notably during WWI. These single-decade rosaries can be worn as a ring or carried easily and are still popular. A rosary ring is a ring worn around the finger with 10 indentations and a cross on the surface, representing one decade of a rosary.
Fort Howard Council started a similar program some years ago (distributing rosaries, not the rings), and to date we have distributed over 35,000 rosaries to various missionaries, local nursing homes, hospital chapels and anyone asking for them.