The Holy Rosary (feast of the Holy Rosary, first Sunday in October). Leo XIII personally instituted this practice in an Encyclical (1 Sept., 1883) in which he admonished the faithful to dedicate the month of October to the Queen of the Holy Rosary in order to obtain through her intercession the grace that God may console and defend His Church in her sufferings, and for nineteen years he published an encyclical on this subject. By the decree of the Congregation of Rites (20 Aug., 1885; 26 Aug., 1886; 2 Sept., 1887) he ordained that every year during the entire month of October, including the first and second of November, in every cathedral and parochial church, and in all other churches and chapels which are dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, five decades of the Rosary and the Litany of Loreto are to be recited, in the morning during Mass or in the afternoon whilst the Blessed Sacrament is exposed, and by the encyclical letter of 15 August, 1889, a prayer in honour of St. Joseph was added.

Indulgences (S. C. Indulg., 23 July, 1898): (a) seven years and seven quarantines every day for the public or private recitation of five decades; (b) plenary indulgence on the feast of the Holy Rosary or during the octave for those who during the entire octave recite daily five decades and fulfil the other usual conditions; (c) plenary indulgence on any other day of the month for those who, after the octave of the feast, recite for at least ten days five decades ("Raccolta", 354; Albers, "Bluethenkränze", III, 730 sq.). Also in October there are devotions in honour of St. Francis of Assisi (feast, 4 Oct.); indulgences, three hundred days each day by assisting at the public devotions in honour of St. Francis in a church or public oratory; plenary indulgence on the feast of St. Francis or during the octave (11 June, 1883, for ten years; 29 Feb., 1904, in perpetuum; "Acta Minorum", 1904, 106). Any other month may be selected instead of October.