On October 11, 1954, Pope Pius XII pronounced the new feast day called the Queenship of Mary in his encyclical Ad caeli reginam. Originally the feast was celebrated on May 31, the last day of the Marian month. In 1969 Pope Paul VI moved the feast day to August 22. The new placement is eight days after the Solemnity of the Assumption and, thus, emphasizes the close bond between Mary’s queenship and her glorification in body and soul next to her Son. The Second Vatican Council’s Lumen gentium states: “Mary was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen of the universe, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.”
[pullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] She is the one who does not fear to stand under the Cross, who is present at the birth of the Church. But she is also the one who, as the evangelist emphasizes more than once, ‘keeps and ponders in her heart’ that which transpires around her. As a creature of courage and of obedience she was and is still an example to which every Christian—man and woman—can and should look. ~Pope Benedict XVI [/pullquote]