St. Marie-Alphonsine Ghattas

Who they were

Soultaneh Maria Ghattas was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian Christian family and entered religious life young. In 1874, in the city of the Gospels itself, she began experiencing apparitions of the Virgin holding a rosary, asking for a congregation of local women, of the land's own daughters, devoted to the rosary and the education of girls.

What she did next is the quiet marvel. She told no one but her confessor and kept the visions secret for virtually her whole life, while doing, methodically, everything they asked. With Fr. Yousef Tannous she founded the Congregation of the Rosary Sisters, the first and still the only religious congregation founded by Palestinians in the Holy Land, and spent five decades opening schools for girls in villages across Palestine and beyond, teaching, catechizing, and praying the fifteen mysteries daily. Her secret held until her notebooks surfaced. She died at Ein Karem, the Visitation's own village, in 1927, and was canonized in 2015 alongside St. Mariam Baouardy. The Rosary Sisters teach across the Middle East today.

Why people turn to St. Marie-Alphonsine Ghattas

Everyone who prays the rosary, since she is the devotion's modern witness from its native soil, alongside St. Louis de Montfort, St. Dominic, and the children of Fatima. Christian families of the Middle East. Teachers of girls, with St. Angela Merici.

How to ask their intercession

Her secrecy is a patronage nobody else holds: for the grace to keep a calling quiet and just do the work. And one rosary offered for the Christians of the Holy Land, which was her own daily intention.