Discerninghearts.com presents Inside the Pages, insights from today's most compelling authors.

I'm your host, Chris McGregor, and I am delighted to be joined by Gretchen Crow,

who is editorial director for periodicals for Our Sunday Visitor,

where she oversees the digital and print publication of OSV News Weekly, the priest, deacon

digest, and simply Catholic. An award-winning writer and photographer, Gretchen has been a member

of the Catholic Press Association since 2008. She is also the author of Why the Rosary? Why Now?

With Gretchen Crowe, we go inside the pages of praying the rosary with St. John Paul

II. Publish by Our Sunday Visitor.

Gretchen, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me, Chris.

Talk to me, if you would, about what motivated you to put

together this beautiful compilation praying the rosary with St. John Paul II. Thank you so much for

asking. I wrote a book a couple of years ago called Why the Rosary, Why Now. And within that book,

I was making a case for the importance of why people needed to pray the rosary, why now. And within that book, I was making a case for the importance of why people

needed to pray the rosary regularly. So identifying some of the issues that were facing our world

and our culture in particular and showing how the rosary could kind of combat those. So

increased secularism, problems within

the church, the problems with the family, the need for peace in the world. Of course, our

universal call to holiness, things like that. And in that book, I used an excerpt from St. John

Paul II's beautiful apostolic letter, Rosarium Virginis

Maria, which is of course the beautiful document in which he introduced the luminous mysteries,

which focus on Christ's public ministry.

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