After the Second World War, Austria was divided into four occupation zones controlled by the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The eastern part of the country, including Vienna, fell under Soviet control. As the Cold War hardened, the situation appeared permanent. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany had all been absorbed behind the Iron Curtain. Austria seemed destined for the same fate. Every diplomatic effort to negotiate a withdrawal had failed.
In 1946, a Franciscan priest named Father Petrus Pavlicek made a pilgrimage to the Marian shrine at Mariazell, Austria’s most beloved place of Catholic devotion. There, he felt a clear interior conviction that the liberation of Austria would come not through politics but through prayer, specifically through the Rosary and the message of Our Lady of Fatima.
In 1947, Father Pavlicek founded the Rosary Crusade of Reparation (Rosenkranz-Suhnekreuzzug). He began traveling across Austria, gathering people in villages, towns, and cities to pray the Rosary publicly, especially on the thirteenth of each month, in honor of the Fatima apparitions. He asked Austrians to pledge to pray the Rosary daily for the specific intention of their country’s liberation from Soviet occupation.
The movement grew steadily. By the early 1950s, tens of thousands had signed the pledge. By 1955, the number had reached approximately 700,000, which represented nearly one-tenth of Austria’s entire population at the time.
Then something happened that stunned the diplomatic world. On March 24, 1955, the Soviet government unexpectedly invited Austrian Chancellor Julius Raab to Moscow for negotiations. Against all expectations and contrary to the pattern the Soviets had established in every other occupied country, they agreed to withdraw from Austria. On May 15, 1955, the Austrian State Treaty was signed at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. By October 25, 1955, the last Soviet soldier had left Austrian soil.
Austria was the only country in the world from which the Soviet Union voluntarily withdrew during the Cold War.
Chancellor Raab, upon returning from Moscow, reportedly said: “We have to thank the Blessed Virgin for this. It was She who did it.” On September 12, 1955, a massive public thanksgiving Rosary procession was held in Vienna, with hundreds of thousands of Austrians filling the streets to thank Our Lady for their freedom.
Father Pavlicek continued his Rosary crusade for the rest of his life, extending its intentions to world peace. His cause for beatification was opened in 2001.
Sources: The Fatima Center, “Rosary Miracle in Austria”; Tradition in Action, “The Rosary Crusade that Freed Austria from the Communists”; School of Faith, “Petrus Pavlicek and the Rosary Crusade”; America Needs Fatima, “Expelled by the Rosary”; and the declassified CIA document “Soviet-Austrian Memorandum” on the Austrian State Treaty.