DETROIT — While St. Anne was officially recognized as patroness of the entire Archdiocese of Detroit last year, there is still a special quality to the celebration of her feast at the first local parish to claim her patronage.

At Ste. Anne de Detroit Parish, it isn’t just a matter of observing her day, July 26, but also the annual novena to St. Anne that begins nine days before it and draws people from across the archdiocese to the historic church by the Ambassador Bridge in southwest Detroit.

For Rose Kuras, 91, a member of St. Frances Cabrini Parish in Allen Park, who still also retains ties to St. Hedwig Parish in her old Detroit neighborhood, this year marked “about 50 years” of attending all nine days of the novena.

“She means a lot to me. She answers my prayers,” Kuras said of the mother of Mary and grandmother of our Lord.

But St. Anne isn’t just patroness of the Archdiocese of Detroit or Ste. Anne de Detroit. She’s also a patroness of pregnant women, mothers and grandmothers, as well as of the childless — and there’s a reason for that.

The story of St. Anne, who isn’t mentioned in Scripture but appears in the ancient Protoevangelium of James, is similar to that of the Old Testament’s Hannah (whose name is the Aramaic version of “Anne”). As the story goes, St. Anne, like the mother of Samuel in the Hebrew Scriptures, was barren until an old age. She prayed constantly for a child until, in her old age, an angel appeared to her and her husband, Joachim, to inform her she would give birth to a daughter, whom they named Mary.

Because of that, St. Anne is a perfect example of faith and fidelity for women in all states of life, a fact not lost on Kuras.

“As a grandmother myself, she has been an inspiration to me,” said Kuras, who has two daughters, five grandchildren and her first great-grandchild “on the way.”

Prayer to Ste. Anne for spiritual favors With deep and heartfelt veneration I come before you, good Ste. Anne With love for your husband Joachim And with motherly love, you prepared Mary’s heart To accept the outpouring of the Holy Spirit And become the mother of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray to thank You, God, for your faithfulness And for the obedient love of Mary. Surround me today with your protection And pray that I will always imitate The love which you and Joachim shared. Help me to know and regret my sin. Teach me to have a deep faith And a steadfast love for Jesus my Savior. Intercede for me that I will always Be true to the duties of my state in life. Preserve me from every danger And accompany me in the hour of death, So that with you, and Mary, and all the saints, I may behold Jesus face to face And be caught up forever In the love of the Blessed Trinity. Amen! From the novena to Ste. Anne prayer book, courtesy of Ste. Anne de Detroit Parish.

Devotions to St. Anne have been popular throughout Christian history, and in 550 A.D., a church to honor her was built in Jerusalem near where it was believed she lived with St. Joachim and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

St. Anne and St. Joachim are also celebrated in the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. St. Anne (Hannah in Aramaic) also is revered in Islam as the mother of Mary.

She also is the patron saint of the province of Quebec, Canada, where a shrine was built in 1658 and novenas are often celebrated similar to those at Ste. Anne de Detroit.

At the Detroit church, the novenas have been offered for more than 100 years, and Kuras has been around for about half of them. She even remembers how she came to find about it around a half-century ago: “I read about it in The Michigan Catholic, and I started coming,” she said.

Both of her daughters were with her for the first day of the novena July 17. One being retired and the other a teacher off for the summer, they said they always make sure their mother can attend.

“Being here is really about my mother, but it’s come to mean very much to us as well,” said Susan Schulz, a member of St. Cyprian Parish, Riverview.

Her sister, Shirley Soltesz, a member of St. Frances Cabrini Parish, agreed, saying she had also started attending the novena with her mother, but had gotten a lot out of it.

“St. Anne is my patron saint, and my grandmother’s name was Anne, and she was my busia’s patron saint as well. Plus we’re very devoted to her daughter, the Blessed Mother,” Soltesz said.

Kuras and her daughters were at a morning Mass, followed by novena prayers and veneration of the parish’s St. Anne relics.

Evening novena prayers, as in other years, were connected with various groups or ethnicities, as people of various ethnic heritages joined in praying to St. Anne.

The current building of St. Anne de Detroit Parish was built in the 1880s, but it is the eighth church.

Founded in 1701 by Detroit’s first French settlers who built its first church within the original fort, Ste. Anne de Detroit is the second-oldest continuously operating parish in the United States.

It’s Ste., not St., in the name, because the French word for a female saint is sainte.

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The Michigan Catholic went to press July 24, before the July 26 feast day celebration at Ste. Anne de Detroit presided over by Archbishop Allen Vigneron, as well as the July 25 Vespers service offered by the archbishop with Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Nicholas at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament.