‘Rosary in a Year’ podcast is No. 1 on Apple charts

CNA Staff, Jan 3, 2025 / 14:50 pm (CNA).

Ascension’s latest podcast, “The Rosary in a Year,” topped the Apple Podcast charts after its release on Jan. 1. The latest “In a Year” podcast landed ahead of other popular podcasts including “The Joe Rogan Experience,” “Dateline,” and “The Daily.”

This is Ascension’s third podcast to reach the No. 1 spot on the Apple charts. The Catholic publisher and digital content producer first topped the charts in 2021 with its breakout podcast “The Bible in a Year” with Father Mike Schmitz. This was followed by “The Catechism in a Year,” also hosted by Schmitz, in 2023.

Hosted by Father Mark-Mary Ames of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, “The Rosary in a Year” podcast consists of daily 15-minute episodes that guide listeners through a deeper encounter with all the elements of the rosary.

In an interview with CNA, Ames said he hopes these phases will help to build “the muscle of prayer.”

“I think there’s a reason the rosary is so popular across demographics, across centuries, [and it’s] because it is really in many ways a great unmatched means of prayer,” he said.

The podcast aims to serve as a form of accompaniment and guidance by taking listeners through six phases of deepening their understanding of the rosary. These include looking at what it means to pray in general and focusing on the actual prayers of the rosary and what they mean. The longest phase will be diving deeper into the mysteries of the rosary, practicing “lectio divina” and “visio divina,” reflections from the saints, and finally praying the rosary.

Ames said he hopes those who listen to the podcast will “grow in their life of prayer and that particularly they fall in love, maybe for the first time, maybe again, with prayer and with the Lord and with Our Lady and with the rosary because they experience the rosary as this privileged doorway in which they get to encounter the Lord.”