Download Holy Rosary 2014

Welcome to Faith Quest at Holy Rosary Church!
Benvenuti! Known as the “national Italian parish,” Holy Rosary Church was established in
1913 to serve the spiritual needs of the Italian immigrants who first lived in its immediate
neighborhood. Our founding pastor, Rev. Nicola (Nicholas) DeCarlo, celebrated Holy
Rosary’s first Mass just over 100 years ago, on Dec. 14, 1913. These days, our parish serves
Italian immigrants throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area, as well as the Catholic
community as a whole.
With our 10:30am Mass in Italian every Sunday, Holy Rosary is one of many Catholic
churches that serves a special ethnic community. This is the uniqueness of the Catholic
Church: Together with its unity in beliefs and oneness in authority, the Church is still able to
reach out and serve people of all races and cultures, respecting their individual
characteristics.
Holy Rosary is a beautiful Italian church with many features of an artistic nature inside.
These include a large painting behind the main altar, a marble pulpit, stained glass
windows, and mosaic Stations of the Cross that are little jewels of art and devotion. Your
quest activity is outdoors, but we hope you can at least look inside our church (when we are
not holding Mass) and take a moment for prayer, or better yet, attend Mass with us. After
Sunday Mass, there’s coffee in the Casa Italiana. (Espresso or cappuchino, anyone?)
Your quest begins on the next page. Through this quest, we hope you’ll learn not only about
Holy Rosary, but also about our Italian heritage and culture. Divertiti! Enjoy!
FAITH QUEST: HOLY ROSARY CHURCH
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HOLY ROSARY QUEST
To begin your quest today, go outside on the sidewalk facing the church, then go to the right.
Behind the fence you will see a statue honoring a famous Italian who is credited for
discovering the New World.
1. What is his (Italian) name?
2. What was the occasion for erecting the statue?
Each year over Columbus Day weekend, Holy Rosary hosts a celebration commemorating
Christopher Columbus landing in the New World. This is just one of several Italian events
and customs that Holy Rosary celebrates. At the end of the Christmas season, we celebrate
Viene la Befana. According to Italian tradition, Befana is an old lady who visits children on
Epiphany. She delivers treats to the good children and coal or a stick to the bad children. At
Holy Rosary, at the Feast of the Epiphany noon Mass, the children are blessed. After the
Mass, La Befana visits Casa Italiana and gives treats to all the children.
We also have a Mass of Thanksgiving for Festa della Repubblica Italiana (Italian National
Day), celebrating the day Italy became a republic; Festa di Sant’Antonio, the feast of St.
Anthony of Padua; a costume dinner dance for Carnevale; Festa Italiana, and other events.
3. Celebrations of the saints, known as feast days, are an important part of the Catholic
faith. We honor these saints for the holy lives they led. There are patron saints of
many different places, occupations, and stations in life. Can you guess who the
patron saint of Italy is? Hint: Our new pope should especially appreciate this feast
day.
Going back to the sidewalk and walking to the building on the right, you will see a huge
mural commemorating our Centennial. The two priests shown are our founding pastor, Fr.
Nicholas DeCarlo, and our pastor emeritus, Fr. Lydio Tomasi.
4. In the middle of the mural you will see two hands holding a sacramental that has
obvious importance to our parish. What is it?
When our parish was founded, Fr. DeCarlo called it Holy Rosary to honor a pledge he made
to the Blessed Mother after recovering from a serious illness.
5. There are some very familiar Washington landmarks in the mural. Can you name
three of them?
In addition to the church, Holy Rosary also operates Casa Italiana, an important center of
Italian culture in Washington, DC. Besides coffee after Sunday Mass, Casa Italiana also offers
Italian language courses as well as classes related to Italian culture, such as Italian cooking,
wine-tasting, literature, cinema, and ceramics. Casa Italiana is connected to the church.
From the mural walk back to the front of the church, and you will see Casa Italiana to the
left. Walk to the front of Casa Italiana.
There are statues on the face of Casa Italiana, celebrating Italians who have made special
impact in the fields of literature, science, music, and art.
FAITH QUEST: HOLY ROSARY CHURCH
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6. Can you match the man to his field of accomplishment? Look at what each is holding as a
clue:
Gugliemo Marconi
Music – holding a music score
Dante Alighieri
Art – holding a hammer and chisel for sculpting
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Science – holding a telegraph key
Giuseppe Verdi
Literature – holding a book
We are very proud of the many contributions Italians have made over the years to society,
including the numerous contributions of Italian immigrants in the nation’s capital,
beginning at least when Constantino Brumidi painted the frescoes under the Capitol’s dome.
Of course, our contributions also include Italian influence on the Church. Pope Francis is our
266th pope and he is from Argentina, but do you know how many popes before him have
been Italian?
7. Solve the following puzzle to find out.
Number of years this parish celebrated in our centennial gala last December,
multiplied by 2
+ Number of Hail Mary’s in a decade of the rosary
+ Number of monuments you named on the centennial mural
+ Number of statues in front of Casa Italiana.
You have completed the quest! You will find the box with the stamp by the activity guides
inside the church. If you need to check your answers, see the next page.
Thank you for coming to visit HOLY ROSARY!
We hope you have enjoyed your visit to Holy Rosary and that you will come back again to
visit soon. Feel free to send photos, posts, or tweets to share your experience here today
with other Faith Questers:
www.facebook.com/groups/faithquesters
Twitter @WashArchdiocese
And remember to update your status on the Faith Quest leaderboard at
www.adw.org/FaithQuest !
FAITH QUEST: HOLY ROSARY CHURCH
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FAITH QUEST ANSWERS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Cristoforo Columbo
The quincentennial (500th anniversary) of Columbus landing in the New World.
St. Francis of Assisi
Rosary
Washington Monument, Capitol Building, and Jefferson Memorial.
Gugliemo Marconi – Science, holding a telegraph key
Dante Alighieri – Literature, holding a book
Michelangelo Buonarroti – Art, holding a hammer and chisel
Giuseppe Verdi – Music, holding a scroll of music.
7. 217! Because the pope is the bishop of Rome, for many, many years it was assumed
that the pope would be Italian.
Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) was an Italian inventor, known for his pioneering work
on long distance radio transmission. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and
he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. Marconi succeeded in making a commercial
success of radio by innovating and building on the work of previous experimenters and
physicists.
Durante degli Alighieri (c. 1265–1321), simply referred to as Dante, was a major Italian
poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, is widely considered the greatest literary work
composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature. In Italy he is known
as il Sommo Poeta (“the Supreme Poet”) or just il Poeta. Dante is also called the “Father of
the Italian language.”
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564), commonly known
as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High
Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.
Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and since then, one of
the greatest artists of all time. A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and
architecture rank among the most famous in existence. Two of his best-known works,
the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of
painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history
of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar
wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (1813–1901) was an Italian Romantic composer
primarily known for his operas. Verdi is considered with Richard Wagner the most
influential composer of operas of the nineteenth century. His works are frequently
performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the
genre, some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture, as "La donna è
mobile" from Rigoletto, "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" (The Drinking Song) from La traviata, "Va,
pensiero" (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, the "Coro di zingari" from Il
trovatore, and the "Grand March" from Aida.
Biographies from Wikipedia.