July 21, 2026

96-year-old-rosary maker shares faith from Detroit, to Adams and beyond

REGIONAL
By Carolee McGrath

SPRINGFIELD — Ninety-six-year-old Dino Moncecchi squeezes in a lot in one day for someone who is supposed to be retired. He spent his career as a machinist, but in retirement, he has stepped up his mission to lead people to Christ.

“It’s not really something that I was thinking about for any reason. I wanted to do something different. I said, ‘Why not. Let’s try the rosary’ and I did. I didn’t have anyone to teach me. I just sat down and looked at pictures and I duplicated what I had seen,” said Moncecchi, who now lives in Monroe, Mich. But the Italian immigrant first settled in Adams, Mass., when he came to the United States after World War II. It was there that he met his wife, Ruth Ann. The couple, married 70 years, attended the former St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Adams.

After their oldest daughter was born, they moved outside of Detroit, Mich., where he found work as a machine operator in a steel mill. Many of his family members still live in the Northern Berkshire town of Adams.

“I make some rosaries for the car. They can hang it up on the car and they can pray as they go,” he said.

Moncecchi sits at his dining room table for hours each day making rosaries for local parishes, missions overseas and family back in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

“I remember growing up back in the old country when my father immigrated to America to start a business. We moved in with my aunt. She would say the rosary every evening. I would try to sneak out. She would say, ‘wait a minute.’ She used to shake her finger at me. She was funny,” he recalled. “Now I realize how wrong I was. I became attached to the rosary.”

“Some people suggest that I should sell them. But myself, I feel like I would give these to people that are willing to pray the rosary, and in turn they should do something for someone else. It’s all my gift,” he said.

The rosaries are ornate: some have 14-carat gold chains and eye pins, and Divine Mercy medallions.

His daughter, Lisa Moncecchi Opfermann, helps by ordering the beads and other materials for the rosaries.

“He’s a self-made, talented artist,” said Opfermann. She said her parents instilled in her a deep faith in Christ.

“When you hear his stories of how he grew up poor, how they had to hide from the Nazis, and for him to maintain that focus and to know that there was a God out there. I consider him my anchor,” said Opfermann, referring to her father’s deep faith.

The family back in Adams also marvels at their uncle’s rosary making mission and faith.

“He’s just the most moral, sweetest man I’ve ever met. I think he influenced my whole family,” said Carla Badorini Rougeau, Moncecchi’s niece. Rougeau and her husband are parishioners of St. John Paul II Parish community in Adams.

She described how her mother and her Uncle Dino were very poor, but had their faith, which they handed down to their children.

“The physical presence of the rosary, it gives you something to hang on to. Red is my favorite color. He made me a red rosary. It is beautiful,” said Rougeau.

There is no doubt that through his rosary making, Moncecchi has been able to evangelize near and far. His great granddaughter, 11-year-old Giavanna, has taken interest in the rosary and shares his great love for Christ.

“We want to go to heaven … he’s my person,” she said of Jesus. “I can talk to him when I need somebody. I can pray. I have many ways I can talk to him, going to church, and receiving the Eucharist.”

These days, Moncecchi isn’t able to attend Mass at his local parish, but he and his wife, Ruth, watch the televised Mass and have Communion brought to them. They pray the rosary every day. He has this advice for people who have been sitting on the sidelines.

“Faith is something we should have on hand at all time. We should always be ready to enter into heaven. It’s so hard to go back once you distance yourself. Do not abandon your faith ever, for any reason. I am thankful every day for what I have,” he said.