October is known as the Month of the Holy Rosary because the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary falls on Oct. 7. Pope Leo started the month by praying the rosary with hundreds of children and their families at the Lourdes grotto in the Vatican Gardens. During his Angelus address in Lourdes a few days earlier, Pope Leo shared a prayer request: “I invite all the faithful and all Christian communities to pray the holy rosary throughout the coming month of October, with the particular intention that wars may cease and that peace may be established among peoples in conflict,” he said.
The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, also celebrated as Our Lady of Victory or Victories, was established by Pope St. Pius V in 1571 to celebrate the miraculous victory of the Christian forces over the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Lepanto on Oct. 7. Previous to the decisive naval battle, St. Pius V had requested all western Christians to pray the rosary; thus he attributed the victory to the power of the Marian prayer rather than the power of ships and cannons.