Pictures of Rosary Sunday in London

This past Sunday, the Dominican church in London, which is jointly dedicated to the Order’s founder and Our Lady of the Rosary, celebrated the external solemnity of the feast of the Most Holy Rosary with His Eminence Vincent Cardinal Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster. (The Dominicans first established a presence in England in 1221, and so celebrate the eighth centenary of their English province this year.) Our long-time contributor and photographer extraordinaire, Fr Lawrence Lew OP, who is also the church’s rector and prior of the community that serves it, kindly shared with us these photos of the Mass, and some other recent goings-on. Many of these photos were sent in by members of the congregation at the Rosary Shrine.

The shrine has 14 side-chapels, each one dedicated to a mystery of the Rosary. The Joyful mysteries and the first two Sorrowful ones run down the church’s left side-aisle, from near the main sanctuary toward the back; the latter three Sorrowful and first four Glorious go from the back up the right side-aisle. The fifth Glorious Mystery, the Coronation of the Virgin, is commemorated in the main apse around the high altar, which has recently been restored and re-gilded. The church also has a separate Lady Chapel with a Rosary Altar in the right transept, at which the Virgin Mary is also honored with the title “Seat of Wisdom”, in reference to the Dominican vocation to scholarship and teaching.

Decorations of the main sanctuary. 

A nice tribute to the medieval heritage of the Dominican Order; lecterns decorated with eagles in this fashion were so common in the Middle Ages that the rubrics of medieval liturgical books often refer to them simply as an “aquila.”

This statue of Our Lady of the Rosary of Manaoag, one of the main devotional statues of the Philippines, is carried in the procession after the Mass. It was a gift from the Basilica of Manaoag, and it is believed to be the only authorized replica statue outside the Philippines. The friars are also holding a candlelit procession through the church every Saturday evening at 7pm this month; pictures of the first procession are seen below.

The tabernacle of the main altar.

The first of this month’s processions by candlelight in honor of the month of the Holy Rosary.

Mass on Rosary Sunday. The friars are wearing vestments decorated with symbols of the Dominican Order, recently commissioned by Fr Lew, as we showed in a post this past June.

The procession

This evening, Fr Lawrence held the launch of his book Mysteries Made Visible: Praying the Rosary with Sacred Art, which is illustrated with his own photographs. It is available internationally via the website of the Catholic Truth Society; a US edition will be published by Ignatius next spring. Feliciter!

Decorations around the priory.