More than 900 Catholics took the rosary to the streets, sidewalks, parks and other public places in Hawaii at noon on Oct. 11, as part of the national 2008 Public Square Rosary Crusade organized by the America Needs Fatima organization.

At 35 sites, groups as small as two and as large as 50 answered Our Blessed Mother’s call to pray to God to save America from today’s immorality and secularism. The date corresponds to the Saturday closest to Oct. 13, the anniversary of the Fatima miracle of the sun.

The public gatherings took place on Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island with Bishop Larry Silva’s blessing.

According to the event’s state team captain Valerie Elefante, 722 people participated on Oahu and 200 on the neighbor islands, though not all sites reported a count. She believes the actual number exceeded 1,000.

Fifty-two rally captains were recruited around the state to organize this year’s events. Elefante said that Hawaii was the only one of the 50 states whose rally captains “joined forces” and organized as a unified group.

The island team captains were: on Maui, Norman Franco and Jacob Toguchi; on Kauai, Nellie Capino and Sonya Elizalde; on Hawaii, Caroline Hart; and on Oahu, Noreen Cristobal and Mary Kapanui. Molokai and Lanai had no team captains.

“The goal of our Rosary Crusade,” said Elefante, “is to place thousands of Rosaries in Our Lady’s hands. She will give them to her divine son, asking him to return, begging pardon and abundant graces of conversion, to be followed by wise and prudent solutions for our nation’s many problems.”

Elefante, Hawaii’s first rally captain, spent three weeks at the America Needs Fatima mainland headquarters in August.

“It was a valuable and rewarding experience that provided leadership training, as well as the inspiration and motivation to reinforce continued devotion to Our Lady especially the Public Square Rosary,” she said.