EXETER — At 13, most teenagers are still in middle school, worrying over homework and socializing with friends. A few are learning to navigate the halls of a new high school, and some are just discovering the youth groups their parishes might offer for teenagers and preteens. Some are still playing with LEGOs or arts and crafts kits, and most have a long way to go before designing their first website or placing orders of supplies for a custom product, much less a religious prayer aide that promotes the Catholic faith.
However, 13-year-old Daniel Wilkins, a parishioner at St. Francis de Sales Parish, North Kingstown, has done all this and more. Two years ago, Daniel discovered he had a talent for crafting handmade rosaries from precious stones and string. He started off selling his creations at the parish’s coffee an’, as well as its Christmas bazaar, finding a willing market in his fellow worshippers, and donated the profits back to the parish for building funds and charitable ventures. Now, his products include a variety of chain-and-religious-medal designs that he plans to sell on his newly-launched and self-designed website, A Greater Glory.
“When I started out, it was something to do,” said Daniel, who gave many of his earliest string-and-bead rosaries away to relatives as gifts. “I found out that I liked it so I started making chain rosaries.”
Daniel’s workspace is his dining room table, where he keeps an extensive collection of rosary-making materials, from beads and crosses to pliers and wire cutters. His first jewelry-making projects were Christmas gifts for his mother, but he gained an interest in rosary-making after seeing a video of a handmade rosary. After discovering the interest the project sparked in his parish, he decided to sell the rosaries, raising money while promoting the devotional prayer.
“The parish was very supportive. They liked what I was doing,” he said.
It takes Daniel about an hour to make one rosary, sometimes longer, and during busy periods he can make as many as five in a week. He orders most of his materials from an online religious goods store, though some of his rosaries contain crosses or medals that his parents, Jay and Linda Wilkins, purchased at the Vatican while visiting Rome. Many of the rosaries are themed to particular saints or devotions, and Daniel takes custom orders for special occasions like baptisms and confirmations.
Daniel also offers to repair rosaries for free, a service he started while visiting nursing homes with his mother, a member of the Legion of Mary. The patients at the nursing homes would sometimes break their rosaries by accident, he explained, so he began bringing along his tools to repair them on the spot or else take the rosaries home to be refurbished with new chains. One elderly woman treasured a rosary she had received for her first communion as a little girl. When the chain broke, Daniel took the beads home and, one at a time, set them on a new chain, recovering an old set of rosary beads with sentimental value and giving it the look and durability of something brand new.
“It’s good to see him sharing his faith with other people,” said Daniel’s father Jay, who explained that his son has also spent time in the past mentoring younger students about how to pray the rosary.
The project has come a long way from Daniel’s first rosary, a plastic-bead-and-shoelace creation that he still uses for his own prayers. When he first put it together, Daniel recounted, he accidentally placed too many beads on some of the decades, forcing him to undo the string and start over.
“There’s a learning curve,” explained Jay. “It’s not something you can really go on YouTube and see. He gains a lot out of the learning process of doing it.”
When it came to the website, Jay helped Daniel purchase a domain name, then stepped back and let his son handle the rest. Daniel chose the Website name, photographed the products, set up a PayPal link for online purchases and even created a prayer request page where visitors to the site can post their intentions. Though he considered making the Website title his own name, Daniel decided “A Greater Glory” would better reflect the site’s goal of promoting the rosary. His next objective is to make a page where customers can scroll through the options for beads and crosses and mix and match their own creations.
“I want to make it easier for people to order custom rosaries,” he explained.
When he’s not making rosaries, Daniel enjoys playing soccer, sailing, reading, hiking and playing the piano, and attends Queen of Heaven online homeschooling academy with his siblings. He is thinking about studying math in college and pursuing a career in the Air Force like his father and older siblings, though at 13, he still has plenty of time to consider. For now, Daniel wants to expand his rosary venture and hopes that moving the business online will help reach a larger audience. He keeps track of the Website’s user data and, lately, has noticed some potential customers peeking at the rosaries from locations in Europe and South America.
“I’ll have to raise my shipping rate,” he said with a smile when asked about the possibility of an international sale.
For more information about Daniel and his rosaries, visit his website at agreaterglory.com.
