Family Rosary Crusade - The Lifelong Crusade

The Lifelong Crusade

Upon receiving his first assignment as a newly ordained priest in 1941, Father Peyton was first assigned as a chaplain for a school managed by the Congregation of Holy Cross in Albany, New York.

Obedient to his vows as a member of the Holy Cross community, Father Peyton accepted the duties but his heart was continuously searching on how to bring about his promise to the Blessed Mother.

Father Peyton discovered his mission for the Blessed Mother on January 25, 1942 He was extensively reading the history of the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

Soldiers of Lepanto, with no hope of winning the war against the Moors, knelt and prayed the Rosary before a perceived losing battle. A miracle was seen to have happened when the Moors were defeated and pushed back. This incident was attributed the Blessed Mother that would serve as the preliminary foundations of establishing the crusade of prayer.

As a school chaplain in New York, Father Peyton lived a modest life and in his bedroom cell was a small bed, a small study table with a painting of the Madonna and Child by Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

Father Peyton got drawn to that painting and would serve as the image of the Blessed Mother for the entirety of his Family Rosary Crusade efforts. The image was first used as the cover for a future pamphlet called "The Story of the Rosary."

Father Peyton started writing to Bishops, priests, Catholic lay organizations about the importance of families praying the Rosary and his appeals, rationale was widely accepted by many.

With the help of Holy Cross sisters in Albany and a friend he would meet there, a priest named Father Francis Woods, Father Peyton began his appeals to promote the praying of the Rosary for all families.

His mission to promote the praying of the Rosary needed a much bigger and wider audience and for fifteen minutes, families went on the air on radio to pray the Rosary on a local radio station in Albany, Waby in October 1943.

The efforts of Father Peyton was being noticed beyond Albany and friends referred him to friends who were not necessarily Catholics to have his mission brought elsewhere across America.

In 1945, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the largest radio network in the United States at that time, made available a half-hour to broadcast the Rosary. This was dubbed by Father Peyton as "the opportunity of a lifetime". Mutual's owner Ed Kobak set certain requirements in order for Father Peyton to make his broadcast.

• Invite the most famous, loved and revered family to pray the Rosary;

• Ask the most famous Hollywood stars to join them;

• Have the most influential people in the US Church speak; and

• Choose the most fitting day to have the majority of Americans listening eagerly to a religious broadcast.

On May 13, 1945, Mother's Day and the same date that the Blessed Mother appeared before three shepherd children in Fátima, Portugal in 1917, Father Peyton aired for the first time his program on nationwide radio on Mutual Broadcasting System from its studios in Broadway.

The radio broadcast featured the Sullivan family of Iowa who just recently lost five sons in the Pacific war to lead the praying of the Rosary followed by a live endorsement of crooner Bing Crosby, patched from Mutual's Los Angeles radio station.

The mission of Father Peyton has finally gone national and within a year. He focused promoting his mission by continuously sending letters and distributing for free Rosary beads and prayer pamphlets. He also continued to promote the mission using radio as means but network executives at Mutual wanted to air programs of Father Peyton with more than just the praying the Rosary. The example set by Bing Crosby could be repeated with other Hollywood stars pitching the call for families praying the Rosary.

Father Peyton journeyed to Los Angeles, California and started to recruit stars to volunteer to help promote his cause. In his first travel to California, actress Jane Wyatt would serve as his bridge to other celebrities and become lifelong friends.

With the help of Hollywood's famous personalities, Father Peyton started to produce family values oriented radio dramas under the banner of "Family Theater of the Air," from Hollywood for his show on Mutual. The first broadcast was made on February 13, 1947 with guest artists Loretta Young, a Protestant James Stewart and Don Ameche.

The broadcast was acclaimed as the most touching program of all, and the Family Rosary Crusade was launched. What Bing Crosby did, others would do. Hundreds of them, Pat O'Brien, Loretta Young, Grace Kelly, James Cagney, Bob Hope, Irene Dunne, Gregory Peck, Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda, Rosalind Russell, Jack Benny, Raymond Burr, Barbara Stanwyck, Margaret O'Brien, Helen Hayes, Natalie Wood, Maureen O'Hara, Jane Wyatt, Ronald Reagan. William Shatner, James Dean and Shirley Temple. gave their names, fame, time and talent to glorify the Rosary and dramatize its mysteries on film, on the radio and on television.

The Family Theater radio programs continued to air up to 1969, one of the longest running drama series on American radio history. The program also gave rise to the establishment of the Family Theater Productions that opened offices in Hollywood with the mission of developing Christian family values film, radio, television programs and outdoor advertising.