July 4, 2009

Have beads, will teach

‘Rosary lady’ seeks young and old to make rosaries for missions.

ANA RODRIGUEZ-SOTO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC MIAMI BUREAU EDITOR

Published: 12.07.07

HALLANDALE | Julia Winters has a closet-full of beads.

Pink and yellow, blue and green, red and white, the plastic baubles fill nearly a dozen 18-quart Rubbermaid containers, and wait in Winters’ closet for nimble fingers to knot them into prayers.

“I’m known as the rosary lady,” said the 87-year-old member of St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Hallandale, who has spent the last two decades supplying materials and training people to make rosaries, then making sure they are delivered “to the far corners of this earth.”

“Wherever there’s a need, we send them,” Winters said of the simple, corded rosaries that cost about 15 cents to make.

There is no shortage of missionaries around the world willing to distribute them as calling cards for Catholicism, but the retired elementary school teacher has a problem. “I’m not inundated with rosary makers.”

The number of parish groups devoted to making rosaries has gone from 15 to eight as members died or moved away. Many of those who still make rosaries are, as Winters puts it, “pushing 90” or beyond. One woman is 93, and another 95.

“How long do you think we’re going to last?” said Winters, who is looking to replace even herself. “I’m not ready to kick the bucket yet but I have to keep that in mind as a possibility.”

Failing eyesight forced her to retire from rosary-making years ago, but age has not dimmed her determination or organizational skills.

“I want to start more groups. I want more individuals to do more rosaries,” said Winters, a take-charge Bronx-Italian who married a Polish war hero and moved to south Florida in 1967. Her husband died 11 years ago.

She took over the rosary ministry in 1987, when she was named head of the international concerns committee for the women’s council at her then-parish, St. Matthew in Hallandale. The group raised funds to build wells in remote African villages, houses in the Caribbean and churches in Siberia.

“Rosary-making at that time was incidental but later on it became very important,” Winters explained.

When she realized the demand, both abroad and at home, she persuaded a parishioner from Little Flower Church in Hollywood to support her cause. Before he died, he created a fund for her ministry with Our Lady’s Rosary Makers, a Louisville, Ky.-based group that supplies beads, cords and crosses.

Because of that fund, Winters can provide rosary-making materials for free to parish groups or individuals. All people have to do is pick them up at her house and return the finished product, or deliver documentation that the rosaries were distributed to missionaries.

One of her biggest customers is Mary Ann Lynch, a member of St. Malachy Parish in Tamarac and retired TWA flight attendant who refers to herself as God’s “donkey.”

“Probably 100,000 rosaries have gone out of my garage this year,” said Lynch, who remembers receiving a rosary from Pope John Paul II when she flew on the papal charter that took him around the U.S. in 1995.

Before retiring in 2001, Lynch personally delivered thousands of rosaries to missionaries traveling through the Holy Land. Now she goes there only once a year, relying on others to do the job.

“I have missionaries coming to my door, calling, at least every week,” she said.

This year alone, Lynch has sent rosaries to 30 countries, from Mozambique to Myanmar, Bolivia to Bermuda, Ecuador to Egypt, and Colombia to Cuba. “It’s miraculous what God has orchestrated.”

Another of Winters’ steady customers is Sister Mary Loyce Newton, a Sister of St. Joseph of St. Augustine, who works in the pastoral care department at Mercy Hospital in Miami.

“We give thousands away each year here at Mercy,” she said.

They go to patients who are Catholic, to doctors and nurses traveling on medical missions around the world, to children in inner-city Catholic schools and even to prison inmates.

“She has given me as many as 10,000 rosaries at one time,” Sister Newton said of Winters. “She used to send rosaries into Russia when it was still under the Iron Curtain.”

“I will give them if I have them but if nobody makes them it’s very difficult,” Winters said.

She noted that children are very good at making rosaries and it is also a great ministry for people who are elderly or live alone, something they can do while watching TV.

“Every time the Blessed Mother appeared on earth, she asked that we pray the rosary,” Winters said, adding that it’s only through the intercession of the Blessed Mother that her ministry has persevered all these years.

“I talk to her a lot,” Winters said. “We’re on friendly terms.”

 

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