When youths caught a glimpse of the royal blue rosaries, they swarmed around Father Matthew Zuberbueler as if he were a rock star handing out autographs.

By the end of World Youth Day, nearly 3,000 youths were walking about Cologne bearing one of the Arlington priest’s rosaries. Many wore the blue rosaries on their wrists and around their necks.

"It’s an instrument, not an ornament," Father Zuberbueler would warn. "If they just wear it and don’t pray it … we encourage them not to do that."

Father Zuberbueler, parochial vicar at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington, created Silverado Blue, an international prayer ministry, to spread the rosaries throughout the world, especially to youths and to the "devotionally poor."

If you give a nun a rosary, he said, it doesn’t have as much of an impact because she would already have a strong prayer life.

"I seek those a little on the fringe," he said. "Devotion is something people can pick up easily."

To date, he estimates the rosaries have been spread to about 10,000 people in 90 countries.

Recipients of the rosary are asked to keep in mind three intentions when they pray — young people, the person who made the rosary and the intentions of all those who have received a Silverado Blue rosary.

The ministry began in 2000 when someone saw a handmade rosary hanging in Father Zuberbueler’s Silverado truck. The rosary had been given to him from a parishioner at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Alexandria whose mother made it.

The simple rosaries are made from tying knots in commercial fishing twine. Father Zuberbueler said the ministry has caught on and spread not only because people like receiving the attractive rosaries, but because they see them and want to learn how to make them. Parishioners from the cathedral and Blessed Sacrament were the first to produce the devotional aids.

The international aspect of the ministry has always been a grass roots effort. If Father Zuberbueler knows someone traveling to another country, he will send rosaries with them. Dennis Reeder, a parishioner at Blessed Sacrament, worked with a man from Ecuador who linked Father Zuberbueler and his ministry to the South American country.

Last year Father Zuberbueler traveled to Ecuador to teach an order of cloistered Carmelite nuns and a group of lay people how to make the rosaries. Eighteen nuns and 52 parishioners of San Ignacio de Loyola parish in the Solanda neighborhood of Quito, Ecuador, are now actively involved in the rosary production. Living in a poor neighborhood, the rosary-makers are grateful for the donations they receive from Silverado Blue in exchange for the rosaries they produce.

Father Zuberbueler maintains contact with the rosary-makers through e-mail updates from the local parish priest.

"It works very well," he said. "(The rosary-makers) are very happy. Everyone is happy."

Before he had the Ecuadorians involved in the rosary production, Father Zuberbueler said he would visit classes within schools to hand out rosaries. "Now I can visit a whole school," he said.

Thanks to their efforts, Father Zuberbueler was able to pick up 3,000 rosaries in Cologne from Ecuadorian youths in town for World Youth Day.

Father Zuberbueler had help from youths traveling with the Arlington Diocese and especially the seminarians, in handing out the rosaries. After one person received one, often times their friends would return for more rosaries.

"We could have given them all away without leaving B-19 (the camp in Marienfeld where diocesan youths spent the night)," Father Zuberbueler said.

At World Youth Days, it has become customary for youths to trade items from their countries as a way of getting to know people from other countries. Many times, when given a blue rosary, youths would want to give something in exchange or pay for the item. But Father Zuberbueler stressed that this was not the purpose of handing out the rosaries. The purpose was to meet people from other countries, to talk to them and to encourage devotion by letting people know if they pray with this rosary and pray for others who have the rosary, thousands of other people are praying for them.

For more information on the Silverado Blue International Rosary Prayer Group, go to www.silveradoblue.org.