Most rosaries arrive in a small plastic bag, identical to the ten thousand made before them. The rosaries that leave a small workshop in Freedom, Wisconsin, arrive with a story attached, and the story is the reason the workshop exists at all.
What do you do with grief that has nowhere to go? For one Wisconsin mother, the answer was to pick up the beads she had been praying since the first weeks of the pandemic and start making them for other people, one decade at a time, with her daughter's name on every one.
Meet Cathy's Cross
Cathy's Cross is a small Catholic rosary business based in Freedom, Wisconsin, a village in Outagamie County about fifteen minutes north of Appleton in the Fox River Valley. The shop sells handmade rosaries built for the way Catholics actually pray: bridal rosaries for the wedding day, First Communion rosaries sized for small hands, car rosaries for the rearview mirror, sturdy rosaries for hiking and travel, and fully custom designs for occasions that deserve something no catalog carries.
Every piece is made by hand from metals and glass or stone beads, and every piece is made in memory of a young woman named Cathy. The founder, Kim, puts it plainly on the shop's homepage: "I enjoy the Rosary so much, I decided to make unique rosaries for others to enjoy. All my Rosary creations are in remembrance and honor of my daughter, Cathy."
You can find the business in the Discover Catholic Business directory, alongside more than 1,600 other Catholic gift and religious goods businesses.
The Story Behind the Name
The business began, in a sense, in March 2020. Like many Catholics in the first weeks of the pandemic, the founder started studying and meditating on the Rosary in earnest, praying it daily and learning the mysteries more deeply than she ever had before.
Less than a year later, on February 16, 2021, her daughter Cathy died in a skiing accident in Bozeman, Montana. Cathy was 21 years old. Her mother describes her as "so full of life and really starting to bloom."
The Rosary she had been praying for a year became the thing that held her up. "The Rosary has given me peace and reinforced my beliefs," she writes on the shop's Our Story page. Out of that peace came a decision: to make rosaries for other people, so that the prayer that carried her through the worst year of her life could carry someone else too.
The name is not a figure of speech. Bridger Bowl, the ski area outside Bozeman where Cathy loved to ski, allowed the family to name a run after her. It is called Cathy's Cross. The business took the same name, so that every rosary that goes out the door carries the memory of a ski run in Montana and the young woman it honors.
What Cathy's Cross Makes
The catalog is built around the moments when a Catholic family gives a rosary as a gift. Prices below are from the shop's website as of September 2026.
| Rosary Type | Examples | Starting Price | |---|---|---| | First Communion rosaries | Sport, Winter Wheat, Wooden, Mermaid Glass, Glow-in-the-Dark "Ocean" | $40 | | Baptismal rosary | Sized as a keepsake for a newly baptized child | $40 | | Bridal rosaries | "Something Blue," Mother of Pearl and Gold Dust Onyx set | $75 to $140 | | Car rosaries | Fall Leaves, Stained Glass, and other seasonal designs | $20 | | Awareness rosaries | Breast Cancer rosary | from $20 | | Masculine rosaries | Heavier metals and darker beads built for daily carry | varies | | Walking, hiking, and backpack rosaries | Durable designs for the trail | varies | | Custom rosaries | Designed with the customer for a specific person or occasion | by request |
The shop also sells prayer journals and gratitude journals, a natural companion for anyone who has discovered, as the founder did, that a daily Rosary changes how you see the day.
A few things stand out in that list. The First Communion line alone has half a dozen distinct designs, including glow-in-the-dark beads for a seven-year-old who wants to pray in the dark and a sport rosary for the kid who would rather be on a field. The bridal rosaries are designed to be carried down the aisle and then kept for a lifetime. The car rosary, priced at twenty dollars, is the kind of small sacramental that turns a commute into a decade of Hail Marys.
Why a Handmade Rosary Matters
A rosary is a sacramental, not a piece of jewelry. Once blessed, it disposes the person who prays with it to receive grace. The Church has never required that a rosary be beautiful, and a rosary of knotted cord prayed with devotion is worth more than a jeweled one left in a drawer.
But there is a long Catholic tradition of making sacred objects with care precisely because of what they are for. A rosary given at a First Communion becomes the rosary a child prays at Confirmation, carries to college, and maybe hands to their own child one day. A bridal rosary prayed on a wedding morning is prayed again on the hard anniversaries. Beads that were strung by a person who prays the Rosary, in memory of someone she loved, carry a different weight than beads that came off an assembly line.
That is what Cathy's Cross offers: rosaries made by a Catholic who prays them, for the moments Catholic families mark with prayer.
Catholic Business in the Fox River Valley
Freedom, Wisconsin, sits in the heart of one of the most Catholic regions of the Upper Midwest. The Fox River Valley was settled in the nineteenth century by German, Dutch, and Irish Catholic families, and the parishes they built in Appleton, Kaukauna, Little Chute, and the surrounding villages remain active today. The Diocese of Green Bay, which covers the region, is also home to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion, the only Church-approved Marian apparition site in the United States, about forty minutes east of Freedom.
That Marian heritage makes a rosary business in Freedom feel less like a coincidence and more like a fit. Wisconsin has a deep bench of Catholic-owned businesses, and you can browse all of them on the Wisconsin Catholic business directory.
For a broader look at how Catholic gift makers fit into the larger economy, see our data report on Catholic gifts and religious goods by the numbers and our guide to finding Catholic gifts and religious goods.
How to Support Cathy's Cross
Order a rosary for the next sacrament in your family. First Communion season runs through the spring, but Baptisms, Confirmations, and weddings happen year-round, and a rosary ordered in the fall arrives well before Advent gift-giving.
Request a custom design. If you want a rosary in a specific color, with a specific medal, or in memory of someone, the shop takes custom requests.
Give the car rosary. At twenty dollars, it is one of the most practical Catholic gifts on the market and one of the easiest ways to introduce a friend to daily prayer.
Share the story. Small Catholic makers rely on word of mouth within parishes, homeschool groups, and family networks. If you know a family preparing for a First Communion or a wedding, send them the link.
Pray for Cathy. The founder asks nothing of her customers, but every rosary from this shop is an invitation to remember a young woman who died at 21 and the mother who turned her grief into prayer.
Cathy's Cross is one of 46,000+ Catholic-owned businesses in the Discover Catholic Business directory. If you make rosaries, sacramentals, or other Catholic goods and are not yet listed, add your listing free and reach Catholic families who are looking for exactly what you make.
Business Info:
- Name: Cathy's Cross
- Location: Freedom, WI
- Website: cathyscross.com
- Products: Handmade rosaries (First Communion, Baptismal, bridal, car, masculine, hiking and travel, awareness, custom), prayer journals, gratitude journals
- Named for: Cathy's Cross, a ski run at Bridger Bowl in Bozeman, Montana, named in memory of the founder's daughter
- DCB Listing: View on Discover Catholic Business
Sources:
- Cathy's Cross, Our Story (https://cathyscross.com/pages/our-story)
- Cathy's Cross product catalog (https://cathyscross.com/collections/all)
- Diocese of Green Bay (https://www.gbdioc.org/)
- Discover Catholic Business directory listing for Cathy's Cross