A Spiritual Tribute to Mary. . . From Elvis?

An interesting note from entertainment history has come to light.  Elvis Presley was known for his rock-n-roll singing and his inspirational gospel music.  However, as several sources have begun to report, Elvis recorded a faith-filled song dedicated to Our Mother, Mary, and her Rosary.  The story goes something like this;

In May of 1971, the 15th to be exact, Elvis Aaron Presley recorded a song entitled “The Miracle of the Rosary”. It would be released the following year on February 20, 1972 on the album entitled Elvis Now!  It’s one of the great mysteries of faith why Elvis, raised in the evangelical Christian denomination Assemblies of God, recorded a song devoted to arguably the greatest Catholic sacramental, the rosary.

The song appears to be about the powerful intercession of Our Blessed Mother in the End Times. The track may be short, running for just over two minutes, but there is still time for Elvis to fully intone the Hail Mary.

The song was written by one of Elvis’s childhood friends, Lee Denson. Denson was the son of a Pentecostal minister. Lee Denson, who was the son of a Protestant minister in the Pentecostal Church, was married to a young Catholic named Mary. Because of this, Lee became interested in Catholic dogma. He often witnessed his wife praying the rosary daily, in response to Our Lady of Fatima's request to the little Portuguese shepherds to whom she appeared in 1917. Gradually, Lee turned to Catholicism and decided to embrace it for good.

One day, when Mary had neglected her prayers for some time, she lost her rosary that had been given to her by a friend who had visited Fatima. She looked for it everywhere in the house but couldn't find it. Yet, on the night of October 13, 1960, Lee found the rosary in its case on the bed! [Note: October 13 is the date of the last apparition in Fatima] At the next day's Mass, Lee and his wife were surprised by the words of the priest who, in his homily, said that Our Lady of Fatima sometimes performs miracles in everyday life, yet people forget to thank her.

So, Lee decided to write the song, which he then proposed to his friend Elvis in 1967, the 50th anniversary of the Fatima apparitions.

There is more: Only one female co-star appeared in two of Presley’s films: Dolores Hart. To the shock of the movie business, she left Hollywood to enter religious life. In 1970, the then-film star entered the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis, Connecticut, where she remains a cloistered nun to this day. The night before she entered the monastery, Presley unexpectedly called her to wish her well in her vocation. He was one of the few of her former Hollywood circle that did so. Later, long after his death in 1977, she was to say that she had never stopped praying for Elvis.

The name of the Benedictine monastery in Connecticut dedicated to Our Lady, Regina Laudis, in English means “the Queen of Praise.” Shortly after Hart’s entry there, mysteriously, a “king” was to praise that same Queen by singing Miracle of the Rosary.

As an Elvis fan, I have many of his albums and I have always been struck by this song.  It stands as a singular sound among the hundreds of his hits.  It conveys a deep spirituality and faith.  Although he was not Catholic, Elvis seemed to understand, on some level, the power of Mary and this was reflected in this lovely song.