By Alison Bradish
The Rosary Bus halting tour in August
Robert Rose is a 26-year-old man who decided to start a Rosary Bus tour in 2020 when Covid-19 restrictions prevented people from gathering to pray together. More than a year later, the “bus” is still moving.
The Rosary Bus works like this. Rose travels virtually to various parishes across Saskatchewan. He posts his checkpoints online at intheredeemer.com, a website run by Deacon Lamont Dyck, who serves at St. Joseph’s parish in Moose Jaw.
Thus far, the Rosary Bus has visited 42 parishes.
Rose created the Rosary Bus as a parody of the 1995 SEGA mini-game Desert Bus found in Pen and Teller Smoke and Mirrors. The objective of Desert Bus is to drive in real-time from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada, at a maximum speed of 72 km an hour. This takes about eight hours of continuous play in which nothing much happens on screen, except for a few sound effects. The player must make sure the bus does not go off the road.
For Rose, the Rosary Bus could be viewed as an escape, like the event Desert Bus for Hope, which is a community of people who gather to play Desert Bus in support of charity.
Rose enjoyed praying the live Rosary in May and October when the congregation would pray the Rosary before Mass. He says he prays the Rosary to get closer to God, it calms him down, and it helps him with his day.
“When the parishes were closed during the pandemic, and since we could not do the live Rosary, I started the Rosary Bus. That was a way to get creative,” said Rose.
“When I stop the bus and arrive at the parish, I start the Rosary,” explains Rose. “During the journey, I think about the Stations of the Cross.”
When the bus “arrives,” Rose prays the daily Rosary from the inthereedemer.com site. One of his most recent trips was from St. Walburg to Onion Lake. His first trip on the Rosary Bus was from St. Joseph’s parish in Moose Jaw to St. Augustine Parish in Wilcox.
Rose learned how to pray the Rosary while attending St. Timothy elementary school in Regina.
He also had a science teacher who got him interested in geo trivia, which fits well with mapping the coordinates of the Rosary Bus.
Dyck, who was supportive of Rose’s idea, said Rose started to leave daily comments about where he was going on his virtual bus.
This spurred interest in where Rose was going, and it gave people a little bit of added focus to pray for the different parishes.
“I think for Robert, just like everybody, it is important to be part of a community, part of something greater than yourself, and I think that [the Rosary Bus] was a great outlet for that,” says Dyck.
“Popular piety, particularly the Rosary, is kind of a language that everyone speaks, in that we can adapt popular piety to meet the needs of people today. It is something we can do outside of Mass that draws us into Mass, in the sense it draws us closer to Christ,” says Dyck.
This past May, Rose even started praying the Rosary in Mandarin.
Rose said he did this to honour and pray for people being persecuted in China when he heard about the Global Prayer for China initiative.
Dyck was not surprised to hear Rose learned how to pray the prayers in Mandarin.
He describes Rose as very devout and someone interested in sharing the faith.
“One time not too long ago, he came to get some things blessed, and his parents were there. His parents are not necessarily churchgoers. I’ve talked to them before, and I think they were feeling like, ‘ok, why are we here?’ and then, all of a sudden, Robert says to me, ‘it’s my parent’s wedding anniversary. Can you give them a blessing, I would really like that.'”
For Dyck, this was a parable of Robert’s faith. “He takes his faith very seriously, and he knows faith brings joy in this world, and he wants to share that with other people. He is very interested in how faith is connected humanly. He talks about his grandmother’s faith, the faith of other people, and how that affects him. I think that is the great gift he brings to our community.”
Rose says the Rosary Bus will wrap up its tour in August.
In the meantime, people can keep up with the travels of the Rosary Bus at intheredeemer.com.
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Alison Bradish lives in Moose Jaw with her husband and two children. They attend St. Joseph’s Parish. She earned Bachelor of Arts in Journalism at the University of Regina. She is naturally curious about local and world events. She writes from her home where she strives to bloom where she is planted. She often feels pulled to the topics of religion, education and politics. |
