Father William Kneemiller of Davenport, Iowa is a Retired U.S. Amy Chaplain, and he got the idea for the Holy Land Military Rosary in 2010. While being deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Middle Eastern countries, he saw the need to bring free rosaries to the chaplains and service men and women who he was serving. He envisioned rosaries made of military grade parachute cord because they could stand up to tough conditions in the field, and a crucifix of olivewood fashioned in the Holy Land. The corpus would be pewter and the beads black. This crucifix would make a personal connection between the user and the place where Jesus lived and died for us.

Once parishioners in his parish in Iowa heard Father William Kneemiller’s idea, children in the parish school raised $250.00 for the supplies, and the women of the parish began making rosaries along with other women from neighboring Iowa parishes. The fundraising continued for the rosaries and the Iowa branch of Serve Haiti purchased rosary making supplies and paid Haitians to assemble more rosaries for the project.

Through a contact of Catholic Christians suffering in Bethlehem, they began making the hand carved olivewood crosses, which for many is their only means of income for survival. Thus, any service man or woman who gets the rosary has a piece of the Holy Land as a reminder of how Jesus suffered for them.

The Holy Land Military Rosaries are donated to Augustine Institute for the military chaplain ministry free of charge through donations to Father Kneemiller’s Holy Land Military Rosary fund. This was made possible after Joseph Alger, Director of Military Outreach reached out to Fr. William Kneemiller and asked if he would be willing to donate the Holy Land Military Rosaries for the military chaplain ministry program. More than 60,000 Holy Land Military Rosaries have been provided to active military, reservist, National Guard, patients in the VA, and military family members.