t the end of World War II, the allies did a nasty thing: they turned
Catholic Austria over to the Russians. The Austrians tolerated this Soviet
domination for three years, but that was enough. They wanted the
Soviets out of their country. But what could Austria do: seven million
against 220,000 million?

hen a priest, Pater Petrus, remembered Don John of Austria. Outnumbered three to one, Don John led the Papal, Venetian, and Spanish ships against the Turks at Lepanto, and through the power of the rosary miraculously defeated them. So Pater Petrus called for a rosary crusade against the Soviets. He asked for a tithe: that ten percent of the Austrians, 700,000 would pledge to say the rosary daily for the Soviets to leave their country. 700,000 pledged.

or seven years the Austrians prayed the rosary. Then, on May 13, 1955, the anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, Portugal, the Russians left Austria. Even to this day military strategists are baffled. Why did the Communists pull out? Austria is a strategically located country, a door to the West, rich in mineral deposits and oil reserves? To them it was an enigma.

l Williams, former custodian of the National Pilgrim Statue of Our
Lady of Fatima, heard me tell this story . He said, you know Father, I am
Austrian. Three months before Therese Newmann died, I visited her (June
18, 1962). One question I asked her was, “Why did the Russians leave
Austria?” She told me, ‘Verily, verily, it was the rosaries of the Austrian
people”

n other words, Our Lady’s rosary did what the Hungarian Freedom
F ighters could not do with a bloodbath of 25,000 people. John Cortes,
a brilliant writer and diplomat of the 19th Century wrote: “Those who
pray do more for the world than those who fight. If the world is going
from bad to worse, it is because there are more battles than prayers.”