A Child of the Rosary

TERESITA TANSECO-CRUZ

October is the month of the Holy Rosary for the Catholic Church. The Feast of the Holy Rosary is celebrated on October 7, established by Pope St.Pius V, to mark the miraculous victory of Christian forces in the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. Succeeding Popes such as Pope Leo XIII and St. John Paul II were known as enthusiastic devotees of the Holy Rosary.

For an active public speaker and host of her podcast, the Rosary turned out to literally mean her life when she became terminally ill.

In April 2019, Canadian TAMMY PETERSON was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer called Bellini tumor with a survival rate of 0%, and she was given ten months to live. Tammy went into surgery for the removal of the cancer. But complications developed shortly afterward from the surgery, involving a leak in her lymph system that worsened her condition. She was rushed back to the hospital, as she was fast wasting away from the leak, having to be drained of 9 liters of accumulated fluid. That is when her friend, QUEENIE YU, came to visit her at the hospital.

Queenie brought two rosaries blessed by Pope Francis. Tammy knew what a rosary was but didn’t know how to pray it, and Queenie taught her. They said the rosary together, praying two hours every day for the next five weeks. Tammy’s heart and spoken intention came with every mystery of the rosary. The rosary allowed Tammy to stay calm without fear of death. She said the Lord’s Prayer through procedures she had to undergo. She did not fear what was ahead, and as she disclosed during an interview: “I just stayed with God in the present.” Family and friends surrounded her with prayers.

When Tammy was told that a doctor in the US might be able to help her, Queenie asked if she wanted to be blessed before she left. Tammy agreed, and the priest who blessed her asked her to pray in gratitude and gave her a Novena for the sick.

On the fifth day of praying the Novena, Tammy was about to be checked to see if the leak in her lymph was still present. If it were, they would open her up again, searching for a “needle in a haystack,” as Tammy called it. She happened to have done the Fat challenge on her own the night before, which involved her eating fat. If, after the Fat Challenge, the clear fluid in her bag turned milky, it meant the lymph was still leaking. They checked her bag that morning, and it was clear. The leak in Tammy’s lymph had closed up. They checked her every week for a month, at the end of which her doctors declared her better and wished her luck.

As a child, Tammy saw her Catholic great-grandmother with her rosary every day, from which Tammy’s own devotion to the rosary later developed. But raised as a Protestant, the young Tammy remembered missing Mary, looking for her. Her great-grandmother’s rosary, which Tammy estimated to now be about 150 years old, did find its way to her. It had been passed down to a cousin who sent it to Tammy upon hearing that she was ill, and that is the rosary Tammy prays with to this day.

Six years after she was told her life would not extend beyond ten months, a healthy and glorious Tammy stood on Easter Sunday in 2024 at the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Toronto. Accompanied by her husband, renowned Canadian psychologist DR. JORDAN PETERSON, and with friend and sponsor Queenie (herself a convert to Catholicism) behind her, laying a hand on Tammy’s shoulder, the joy-filled Confirmand, baptized as a Protestant and converted to Catholicism, was now being given the sacrament of Confirmation. And this faithful child of the rosary chose her Confirmation name: MARY.

The facts in TAMMY PETERSON’s story were culled from published articles on Ms. Peterson and YouTube videos of her interviews.

Sent from my iPad