World Apostolate of Fatima Blue Army Shrine

The Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima was founded in 1947 at St. Mary's Church in Plainfield, New Jersey, by Monsignor Harold V. Colgan and layman John M. Haffert, thirty years after the apparitions at Fatima, Portugal (1917). In the early years of the Cold War, Colgan and Haffert rallied Catholic laity to wear something blue as a public sign of devotion to the Immaculate Heart and to pledge daily prayers, the Rosary, the Brown Scapular, and the Five First Saturdays devotion, naming the spiritual force the 'Blue Army' in contrast to the Soviet 'Red Army.' Members were asked to offer their daily sufferings for the conversion of sinners, and Sister Lucia herself helped shape the wording of the Blue Army Pledge. In the early 1950s, Colgan and Haffert established the Ave Maria Institute on Haffert's farm in Washington, New Jersey, which served as the administrative center for processing Pledge cards, handling correspondence, publishing Soul magazine, and coordinating the travels of the Pilgrim Virgin Statue. Around the same period, the movement purchased land in Fatima itself and built the Domus Pacis hotel and conference center, which remains the headquarters of the international World Apostolate of Fatima. Haffert later donated his farm — roughly 115 to 150 acres — to the Blue Army, and the Holy House Chapel, a scale replica of the Holy House of Loreto (the home of the Holy Family now enshrined in Loreto, Italy), was dedicated in 1973. The builders reportedly pulverized stones from the original House of Loreto and mixed them into the chapel's mortar, while the altar incorporates a section of the very altar in the chapel at Tuy, Spain, where in 1929 Sister Lucia received her vision of the Trinity and Our Lady of Fatima extending her Immaculate Heart. The main Immaculate Heart of Mary chapel — an octagonal, 1,400-seat structure whose roof sweeps up into a central tower representing the Virgin's mantle — was constructed in 1978 and completed in 1979. Crowning it is a bronze statue of the Immaculate Heart of Mary that holds out a Rosary and Scapular. The Capelinha, Portuguese for 'little chapel,' is one of only two exact replicas in the world of the chapel built at Fatima on the apparition site; it houses the Pilgrim Virgin Statue, itself an exact replica of the miraculous Pilgrim Virgin Statue carried in procession at Fatima, donated by the Catholic Portuguese community. Over the decades the grounds have grown to include a Rosary Garden, a Blue Army Cemetery holding the graves of Monsignor Colgan, John Haffert, and Mother Mary Stanislaus, plus a Stations of the Cross, a St. Francis of Assisi garden, a St. Pio of Pietrelcina shrine, a St. Therese of Lisieux shrine, a Mary Mother of the Life Within grotto, a Holy Family Candle House, the Marian Way with Byzantine icons, and a Guardian Angel Peace Pond. The Shrine hosts more than 50,000 pilgrims a year. In December 2025 the Vatican designated it an official pilgrimage site for the Extraordinary Marian Jubilee Year marking 100 years of the First Saturday Devotion — the only site outside Spain so designated — where a plenary indulgence may be obtained from December 10, 2025 through December 10, 2026.