The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the memorial that honors Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth, exalted above the angels and saints and crowned in glory at the side of her Son, the King of kings. Her queenship flows not from earthly power but from her unique union with Christ the King and her role as Mother of the Redeemer; she reigns as a mother who intercedes tirelessly for her children and leads them to her Son.

Though Mary had been hailed as Queen in the prayers and hymns of the Church for many centuries, Pope Pius XII gave the devotion a proper celebration in his 1954 encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam, during a Marian Year. In the reform of the calendar the feast was fittingly placed on 22 August, the octave day of the Assumption, so that Mary's crowning in glory is seen as the crown and completion of her being taken up body and soul into heaven.