The popular Catholic organization Ascension announced that it would launch the “Rosary in a Year” podcast this coming January, following the successes of the popular “Bible in a Year” and “Catechism in a Year” podcasts.
On Oct. 28, Ascension announced that Father Mark-Mary Ames, CFR, would be guiding the new daily podcast aimed at helping people to better understand the prayers and mysteries of the Rosary.
“How beautiful would it be for us, like many of the great saints, if we were just, throughout the day, constantly praying the Rosary, reflecting on Jesus and Mary and the great mysteries of our salvation,” Father Mark-Mary said during an Oct. 28 press conference. “To help us fall in love again, to be renewed again in our praying of the Rosary, the team here at Ascension put together the ‘Rosary in a Year’ podcast.”
A new podcast will be released every single day beginning Jan. 1, 2025. Each episode will last between 12-15 minutes and will explore a different aspect of the Rosary and the theology behind it.
“We are going to go through the Hail Mary, the Our Father, each of the different mysteries. Then, we’re going to bring in some saint writings on the mysteries and some sacred art that speaks on the mysteries,” Father Mark-Mary said. “All of this will be to help enrich our prayer, to renew our prayer, to help us fall in love with Jesus and Mary and fall in love with the Rosary.”
How the podcast came to be
The “Rosary in a Year” podcast comes after Ascension saw widespread success with its “Bible in a Year” and “Catechism in a Year” podcasts hosted by Father Mike Schmitz. The “Bible in a Year” podcast has over 750 million all-time downloads, is the #1 Catholic podcast of all time, and was #1 on Apple Podcasts in all categories in both 2021 and 2022. The “Catechism in a Year” podcast has over 100 million downloads and was #1 on Apple Podcasts in 2023.
“We’re hoping that Father Mark-Mary might join that illustrious group of Catholic podcasters,” Lauren Joyce, an Ascension spokesperson, said. “We know that many of the listeners of ‘Bible in a Year’ and ‘Catechism in a Year’ have been looking for something new. After talking about Catholic Scripture and Catholic teaching and tradition, we’re very excited about the way Father Mark-Mary’s going to lead listeners in Catholic prayer.”
The idea for the “Rosary in a Year” podcast came from the success of a YouTube video that Father Mark-Mary and Ascension released, titled “The Rosary in A Year,” in which Father Mark-Mary explored the tradition of the Rosary. Ascension also noted the popularity of other videos covering the Rosary that Father Mark-Mary and Ascension have released, including a pray-along video that has over 5 million views.
“In December of 2021, Father Mark-Mary did a video on Ascension Presents called ‘The Rosary in a Year,’ and after seeing that video and how people liked it, and then also noticing that Father Mark-Mary has done many videos on Ascension Presents about the Rosary, how to dig deeper in the Rosary, and how to get more out of it,” Joyce said. “After seeing all of that at Ascension, we thought that maybe this Rosary is the next path to move towards for the ‘in-year’ family.”
Appealing to a wide audience
Ascension and Father Mark-Mary designed the podcast to be approachable so that anybody, from a Protestant who happens across the podcast to a theologian, will be able to understand the material and walk away more knowledgeable about the Rosary and hopefully with a deeper spiritual life.
“I have a particular desire to speak to the beginner and provide an initial, very foundational, accessible catechesis,” Father Mark-Mary said. “My heart is for people who are new to the truth of the Faith and are also new to prayer. What I’ve experienced, again, as somebody who is maybe not new to faith, is that this podcast can be profoundly enriching for me as well.”
In addition to the podcast, Ascension will be releasing the “Rosary in a Year Prayer Guide,” which will include the sacred art and saint passages that the podcast will be discussing. Ascension will also be releasing kits and booklets for parish groups.
“We’re also excited to roll out parish support resources, so if a parish school or other community wants to do the ‘Rosary in a Year’ as their initiative for 2025, we will send, for free, a retractable banner for the lobby, as well as 250 pew cards,” Joyce said. “This is new for our ‘in-a-year’ podcast series. We’re really excited about this, and we hope that many parishes and schools get into the Rosary in that way. For those communities, we will also have a booklet version of how to pray a better Rosary.”
‘I hope people fall in love’
For Father Mark-Mary, though, he is most excited to share his own love and devotion for the Rosary with a wide audience. He shared that the Rosary has a profound impact on his own life, and he hopes that it will impact others.
“The Rosary has been a source of profound, answered prayers, and it’s been a very tangible way in which I’ve seen the Lord and Our Lady intervene and pour out graces,” Father Mark-Mary said. “The Rosary is an ongoing place of keeping the main thing that helps us to keep going deeper.”
Through this podcast, Father Mark-Mary hopes to help people grow in their prayer lives and fall more deeply in love with the Blessed Mother and the Lord.
“The bottom line is this: I hope people fall in love,” Father Mark-Mary said. “I hope our listeners and those who make this journey with us fall in love with the Rosary because they experience it as a privileged door for an encounter with Our Lord and Our Lady. They love it because they love who it brings them into contact with, the Lord and the Blessed Mother.”