Understand The Times, International

Benedict XVI gave a Golden Rose to Our Lady of Ta' Pinu today, and invited the Maltese to pray to her as the Queen of the Family.

After presiding at Sunday Mass in the Granaries Square in Floriana, and before praying the Regina Caeli, the Pope affirmed the "particular devotion of the Maltese people to the Mother of God, expressed with great fervour to Our Lady of Ta� Pinu and so I am pleased to have the opportunity to pray before her image, brought here specially from Gozo for this occasion."

I am pleased to have the opportunity to pray before her image, brought here specially from Gozo for this occasion.

The Holy Father asked that the Maltese pray to Mary "under the title Queen of the Family, a title added to the Litany of Loreto by my beloved predecessor, Pope John Paul II, himself on more than one occasion a visitor to these shores."

The Golden Rose is a papal decoration conferred on prominent Catholic personalities; it has gone through a significant evolution. Initially, kings and dignitaries received it, later it was conferred almost exclusively on queens and, more recently, on Our Lady. The distinction was created by Pope Leo IX in 1049. In more recent times, after the Second Vatican Council, the papal decoration has become almost exclusively a gift from popes to Our Lady.