World's Largest Rosary Collection

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

History, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Education

5 • 724 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Brown wasn't Catholic when he became fascinated with the Rosary. A bad bout of pneumonia when he was young put him in a hospital run by Sisters of Mercy in the early 1900s. In 1917 he began to collect rosaries. In 1929 he became Catholic. Over the decades he collected about 4,000 rosaries before his death in 1975 at 80 years old. His rosaries include some connected to Sister Lucia, one of the visionaries of Fatima, Governor Al Smith, Padre Pio, President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Father Flanagan of Boys Town, Lou Holtz, and others. They range in size from the size of a thimble to 16 feet long. They are made from everything from precious gems to pieces of bone to foam balls. The collection occupies the top floor of the Columbia Gorge Museum in Stevenson, Washington, 45 minutes east of Portland, Oregon.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to American Catholic History, brought to you by the support of listeners like you.
0:11.1	If you value this podcast, please become a supporter at Americancatholichistory.org
0:17.0	slash support.
0:18.0	I'm Noelle Heester Crowe.
0:20.0	And I'm Tom Crow. Today we're talking about the largest
0:23.3	collection of rosaries on earth. It isn't in the Vatican, nor in anyone's grandmother's living
0:29.2	room. It's actually in a public government-supported museum in the state of Washington.
0:35.2	More than 4,000 rosaries are on display in the Columbia Gorge
0:40.1	Interpretive Center, and it is recognized by Ripley's believe it or not as the largest
0:45.4	collection of rosaries on earth. This unique collection came together as the lifelong fascination
0:51.9	of one man, and that man was a convert to the Catholic faith.
0:56.7	Yes, Donald Brown was born in 1895 just south of Portland, Oregon.
1:01.8	He was not raised Catholic, but an experience early in his life put him on a path of conversion,
1:06.8	and the rosary played a large role in that.
1:09.4	When he was in his teens or early 20s, the exact age
1:12.1	isn't given. He had a bad case of pneumonia. He received treatment for a time at a hospital
1:17.3	in North Bend, Oregon. The hospital was run by the Sisters of Mercy. At the time,
1:22.9	the sisters' habits included a large rosary, a lot of orders have this, hanging from their belt.
1:29.0	This display of the religious item captivated the young man. He said they always had a
1:33.5	fascination with religious art, and this just really grabbed his imagination. Eventually, in
1:38.2	1929, at 33 or 34 years old, he converted to Catholicism and was baptized. But by that point, he had already
1:46.4	been collecting rosaries for 12 years. Now, we may have some listeners who aren't Catholic
	...

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