Maker of rosary for 2024 National Eucharistic Congress hope to inspire Eucharistic devotion

The official rosary for the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress. / Credit: Ghirelli

CNA Staff, Mar 1, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

The Catholic rosary company Ghirelli recently announced its partnership with the National Eucharistic Congress in making the official rosary for the congress, which will be held July 17–21 in Indianapolis.

Founded by Alessandro and Cinzia Ghirelli, the family-run company has been crafting rosaries for more than 30 years. It has created the official rosaries used by the past three popes that are given by the Holy Father to special guests during his audiences and apostolic journeys. 

Ghirelli has worked with Catholic shrines around the world — including Fatima, Knock, Lourdes, and others — to create their official rosaries. Now, the company is supplying the official rosary for the 10th National Eucharistic Congress.

Dino Piccinini, managing director of Ghirelli in the United States, spoke with CNA about the inspiration behind the rosary for the congress.

Piccinini explained that the rosary is “very Eucharistic in nature. The inspiration is the monstrance.”

“The centerpiece is a miniature version of the monstrance that’s going to be at the congress in July that’s going to be holding the Blessed Sacrament,” he said.

He shared that Ghirelli was able to use drawings and renderings of the monstrance created for the National Eucharistic Congress in order to replicate it in great detail. 

The design of the crucifix is based on John 15:5: “I am the vine; you are the branches.”

“It’s natural. It’s earthy. And we pulled that theme into making it into a crucifix because there’s passages that say Jesus was hung on a tree, which is symbolic of the cross,” Piccinini explained.

“It just made sense that we have kind of a double whammy of a Eucharistic theme,” he added. “So, we’ve got the grapes on the vines and we have the monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament inside.”

Piccinini hopes that this rosary will inspire people to “increase their devotion to the Eucharist and at the same time to the devotion of the rosary because we all know that the rosary is a very powerful weapon against all the battles that are happening.”

“I think having the Eucharist and increasing the devotion to the Eucharist and receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist more often and also praying the rosary more frequently, I think people will be in such a better place and it’ll bring people back to the Church.”

“We share in the mission the congress has set; we just want the renewal of the Church in our country and in the world,” Piccinini said.