One of the disciples watches Jesus finish praying and says, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples." Jesus answers with the Our Father: "Father, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test." That prayer begins every decade of the Rosary, which the Church honors today on the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. Today's news has a Vatican meeting that builds prayer into its method, a lawsuit over the sacraments, and sisters who pray the Rosary at the bedsides of the dying.

The deeper reflection on today's readings - and a daily prayer for your household - is waiting in the & Altar app and at andaltar.com. More after the news.

📰 Quick Hits

1. The Vatican's Family Meeting Opens Today, With Prayer "Part of the Method"

Pope Leo XIV opens a closed-door meeting at the Vatican today, "Ten Years After Amoris Laetitia: Proclaiming the Gospel With Families Today," running through October 14 in the Paul VI Audience Hall. It brings together 187 participants, including 111 presidents of bishops' conferences, leaders of the Eastern Catholic Churches, and couples and families from five continents. Pope Leo will introduce the proceedings after a meditation by Dominican Sister Helen Alford. Fr. Giacomo Costa, who oversees the methodology, says prayer is "part of the method": "It is not enough to gather information and compare positions; we must prepare ourselves to listen to the Word, to others and to what the Spirit can bring forth through dialogue." The meeting will produce a report, not a new final document.

Faith Lens for the Home: The disciples asked to be taught to pray, and the bishops are opening a week about families by doing the same. Ask your family: "Who first taught each of us to pray, and who are we teaching?" Pray a decade of the Rosary this week for the bishops and families gathered in Rome.

2. St. Louis Archdiocese Sues Over Sacraments for Detainees at a Missouri Jail

The Archdiocese of St. Louis filed a federal lawsuit Monday over visitation rules at the Ste. Genevieve County Detention Center, which ICE uses to hold about 150 immigration detainees. The suit says clergy can visit only during a four-hour window on Mondays and can speak to detainees only by telephone through a glass partition, so priests cannot hear confessions, give Communion, or celebrate Mass. Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski said the restrictions are "robbing the detainees of their rights to have access to these sacraments," and the archdiocese asks for the same access given to attorneys and consular officials. The Department of Homeland Security calls the allegations "FALSE," saying the facility is "a non-contact county jail, not an ICE facility" and that detainees are accommodated with religious services, including Catholic priests and the sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance.

Faith Lens for the Home: The archdiocese points to Jesus' call to "visit the imprisoned," while DHS disputes the facts, so a court will have to sort out what is actually happening. Ask your family: "How do we stay fair-minded about a disputed story while still caring about the people at the center of it?" Pray for the detainees, for the priests who want to reach them, and for the officials responsible for the jail.

3. Notre Dame Honors the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne

Notre Dame's de Nicola Center announced Sunday that the 2027 Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal, a $10,000 pro-life award, will go to the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. For more than 125 years the sisters have provided free nursing care to poor men and women dying of cancer, at Rosary Hill Home in Hawthorne, New York, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home in Atlanta, accepting no government aid, insurance, or payment from patients or their families. The order was founded by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, a daughter of the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Notre Dame's president, Fr. Robert Dowd, said that in their work "the sisters radiate the very mercy of God." The medal will be presented in April 2027.

Faith Lens for the Home: Notre Dame's own photo for the announcement shows a sister praying the Rosary with a patient in a hospital bed. Ask your family: "Who do we know who is sick or dying, and what would it look like to pray with them, not just for them?" Pray today for the sisters and their patients.

⛪ Family Saint Spotlight

Our Lady of the Rosary - October 7

The word Rosary means "crown of roses," from the medieval custom of crowning statues of Our Lady with flowers. The prayer grew slowly. Monastery lay brothers who didn't know Latin prayed Our Fathers in place of the 150 Psalms. A Carthusian novice named Dominic of Prussia (the order St. Bruno founded, whom we met yesterday) paired Hail Marys with short meditations on the life of Jesus. In the 1400s the Dominican Blessed Alain de la Roche spread it among ordinary people, arranging it in 15 decades. Tradition credits St. Dominic himself, but the Vatican's saint-of-the-day page says there is no evidence for that.

The feast comes from a sea battle. On October 7, 1571, a Holy League fleet from Spain, Venice, Genoa, and the Pope, among others, led by Don John of Austria, King Philip II's half-brother, met the Ottoman fleet off the Greek coast near Lepanto. Christians had invoked Mary with the Rosary before the battle, and by tradition Pope Pius V, a Dominican, had a vision of the victory in Rome as it happened and knelt to give thanks. The League won, freeing thousands of Christian galley slaves, in the last major battle fought with oared ships. The writer Miguel de Cervantes was wounded there, and the League's political gains proved short-lived. Pius V instituted a feast of Our Lady of Victory. In 1573 Gregory XIII renamed it for the Rosary, in 1716 Clement XI extended it to the whole Church, and in 1913 Pius X set it on October 7. In 2002 John Paul II proposed adding the five Luminous Mysteries.

Ask at dinner: "The Rosary began as ordinary people's way of praying when they couldn't read the Psalms. What prayer could our family say together every day this week, even if it's only one decade?"

✋ One Simple Action

Tonight, pray the Our Father slowly as a family, then one decade of the Rosary, or the whole thing, as Pope Leo has asked this month. Today is the last day of the children's Rosary campaign, so let your kids lead. Offer it for the bishops and families at the Vatican this week and for the detainees at Ste. Genevieve, and then pick one person who is sick or alone and pray with them, in person or by phone.

📚 Read More

• The Vatican's family meeting: Vatican News (https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2026-10/amoris-laetitia-for-a-new-proclamation-of-the-gospel-with-famil.html) and Catholic Review, OSV News (https://catholicreview.org/vatican-meeting-on-amoris-laetitia-to-focus-on-listening-not-past-debates-officials-say/)
• St. Louis Archdiocese lawsuit: OSV News, including DHS's response (https://www.osvnews.com/st-louis-archdiocese-sues-over-ice-policy-barring-it-from-providing-sacraments-to-migrants/) and Reuters via KSL (https://www.ksl.com/article/news/us/catholic-diocese-sues-us-government-seeking-clergy-access-to-detainees/51632639)
• Notre Dame honors the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne: Notre Dame News (https://news.nd.edu/news/notre-dame-to-award-2027-notre-dame-evangelium-vitae-medal-to-dominican-sisters-of-hawthorne/)
• Our Lady of the Rosary and Lepanto: Vatican State, saint of the day (https://www.vaticanstate.va/en/state-and-government/general-informations/saint-of-the-day/782-7-october-our-lady-of-the-rosary.html) and Franciscan Media (https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/our-lady-of-the-rosary/) and The Tudor Society, on the battle (https://www.tudorsociety.com/battle-lepanto-7-october-1571-heather-r-darsie/) and Dominican Friars, on the Luminous Mysteries (https://english.op.org/godzdogz/the-rosary-the-luminous-mysteries/)

Lord, teach us to pray, a disciple asked, and Jesus gave him words short enough for a child to learn. Bishops from around the world are opening a week about families with prayer. An archdiocese is asking a court to let priests give detainees confession and Communion. Sisters are praying the Rosary at the bedsides of the dying. Begin where Jesus began, with Our Father.