Two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, my sister and a friend of hers went to New York City to view the devastation. She recalls standing on the corner of Wall and William Streets outside a Catholic Church that had dust and debris from the disaster all around it. She brushed dust from one of the windows and found part of a common office routing slip, no doubt from one of the buildings. The Catholic Church was Our Lady of Victory, part of the Archdiocese of New York.

A couple of weeks ago, the Petitions of the Faithful at the Sunday Mass I was attending included an exhortation for peace. Like most Catholics in these troubled days, I’ve heard that same prayer many times. It occurred to me while listening to the petitions that I haven’t heard any prayers asking for victory and I wondered why.

I knew that there were a number of Catholic parishes in the United States named "Our Lady of Victory" and I wondered if the Prayers of the Faithful were any different in those churches. I also wondered where the Our Lady of Victory appellation came from. So I did some research.

The title commemorates the naval battle of Lepanto fought in October of 1571 in the Gulf of Lepanto off the coast of Greece between the Muslim Turks — who ruled the Ottoman Empire — and a loose coalition of Christian forces primarily from the Papal States, Spain, Venice, Genoa, Savoy and the Knights of Malta.

The Gulf of Lepanto, now called the Gulf of Corinth, is an inlet of the Ionian Sea running from east to west and separating the Peloponnesian peninsula to the south from the Greek mainland to the north. It is bordered on the east by the Isthmus of Corinth and on the west by the Strait of Rion, which separates the inner Gulf of Corinth from the outer Gulf of Patros.

In the fall of 1571, an Ottoman fleet commanded by Uluj Ali Pasha had been anchored inside the fortified harbor of Lepanto, now known as Nafpaktos, in the inner gulf (Corinth). On Oct. 5 the Ottoman Fleet began to move westward through the Strait of Rion to the outer gulf (Patros). On Oct. 7, in the Gulf of Patros, the Ottoman fleet of approximately 290 ships encountered a smaller Christian fleet of approximately 210 ships commanded by Don Juan of Austria.

As was the custom at that time, when two rival fleets finally assumed their respective battle formations one of the rival commanders would fire a cannon shot as a challenge to fight and his opponent would fire two cannon to accept the challenge. On this day the challenge shot was fired by the Turkish flagship which then hoisted a large green silk banner, decorated with the Muslim crescent and holy inscriptions in Arabic. Don Juan’s flagship quickly responded with a double round from its cannon.

Thus began a classic military confrontation between the Crescent and the Cross, Islam and Christianity. The battle was one-sided. When it was over the Christian fleet had lost 12 ships, the previously invincible Ottoman navy lost 240. The humiliating defeat halted a pending Islamic invasion of Europe. The Holy Pontiff at that time, Pius V, attributed the victory to the intercession of the Blessed Mother.

Her intercession was needed, he believed, because by the 1560s the Ottoman Empire, with the largest navy in the world, was beginning to turn the Mediterranean Sea into an Islamic lake and the Turks were threatening to invade Christian Europe. To confront the threat, the pope, a skillful diplomat, managed to create an anti-Ottoman alliance consisting of the Papal States, Spain, Venice, and Genoa. The alliance was called the Holy League.

Knowing that the Christian forces would be at a distinct material disadvantage, Pius V called for all of Europe to pray the rosary for victory. Supposedly, at the hour of victory the pope, who was hundreds of miles away in Rome, stood up from a meeting, went over to a window, and exclaimed: "The Christian fleet is victorious!" The saintly pontiff would later be beatified by Pope Clement X in 1672 and canonized by Clement XI in 1712.

The Christian victory at Lepanto was first celebrated liturgically as "Our Lady of Victory." Later, the feast of Oct. 7 was renamed "Our Lady of the Rosary" and extended throughout the Universal Church by Pope Clement XI in 1716.

The Catholic church in the middle of New York’s financial district, Our Lady of Victory, the one from which my sister and her friend viewed the devastation wrought by Islamic terrorists, is also known as the War Memorial Church. Dedicated by Cardinal Francis Spellman in 1944 during World War II, the front door of that church bears this quotation from the cardinal:

"This Holy Shrine is dedicated to Our Lady of Victory in thanksgiving for victory won by our valiant dead, our soldier’s blood, our country’s tears, shed to defend men’s rights and win back men’s hearts to God."

Our Lady of Victory, pray for us!