Despite stormy weather, including predictions of a tornado, members of the Michigan Area turned out for the feast day of Sts. Anne and Joachim at the basilica of Ste. Anne de Detroit on Wednesday, July 26th.

Michigan Area members attended the feast day Mass, which was celebrated by Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron, ChC, and concelebrated by Bishop William Wack, CSC, Bishop of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee.

The feast day Mass was the culmination of a novena dedicated to Ste. Anne, patroness of the Archdiocese of Detroit. The Ste. Anne novena is a long-standing tradition for the parish, dating back to 1886. Each of the nine days of prayer has a different theme associated with an ethnic group important to the city of Detroit. The Michigan Area has participated in the feast day Mass for the last six years.

Archbishop Vigneron said that the feast day offered an opportunity to reflect on Sts. Anne and Joachim’s role in salvation history, as the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary and grandparents of Jesus. “We need to think about how Anne and Joachim played a role in bringing about the Incarnation, so we can then understand the blessings offered to us,” he said.

Following Mass, the litany of Ste. Anne was recited while parishioners carried a statue of Ste. Anne in procession around the church. Michigan Area members and others then had the opportunity to venerate relics of Ste. Anne.

Afterward, Michigan Area members toured the Heart of Christ Clinic, located in the old Ste. Anne’s convent. The four-floor clinic, which includes an adoration chapel with the Blessed Sacrament, has a floor for obstetrics and gynecology, and a separate floor for family medicine. The clinic will serve both insured and uninsured patients. The clinic is a collaboration of healthcare providers Ascension Michigan and Trinity Health Michigan, as well as the Christ Medicus Foundation, the Knights of Columbus, and the Order of Malta.

Ste. Anne de Detroit is the second oldest continuously operating parish in the United States. The first church building, a tiny log chapel, was dedicated on the feast day of Ste. Anne, July 26, 1701, two days after the city of Detroit was founded by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. French missionaries encouraged devotion to Ste. Anne, and in 1886 a shrine to Ste. Anne was constructed in the southeast side of the church. One of Ste. Anne’s early pastors was Fr. Gabriel Richard, the renowned “second founder of Detroit” who helped Detroit recover from a devastating fire in 1805 (he coined the city’s motto, Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus – “We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes”) and was co-founder of the University of Michigan.