Fatima Family Shrine

Fatima Family Shrine is a replica shrine in Alexandria, South Dakota, built in the late 1980s in homage to Mary’s apparitions in Fatima, Portugal. This chapter examines how this shrine both commemorates the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima and reinterprets her messages in—and for—the translocal milieu of rural South Dakota. Replica shrines, I demonstrate in this chapter, are always an act of reinterpretation. I argue that these reinterpretations of the Fatima vision allow Catholics to claim moral authority of “family values” and Catholic identity in the contemporary US While historical emphasis on Fatima’s messages urges the devout to pray the Rosary as a guard against the threats of communism, the shrine emphasizes Fatima’s message as a protector of Catholic norms. The reinterpretations at work within the Fatima Family Shrine illustrate the reworkings that are part of how shrines recreate devotional meanings in new places and changed milieu.