The Parish of Saint Anne Catholic Church was first established
in 1955 when nearby St. Mary's was becoming overcrowded. The school
building on the west side of the property was built first. The
first Mass was celebrated in the gymnasium on July 7th, 1957.
Before long, four Masses were necessary to accommodate the new
parish of 350 families. The Sisters of Notre Dame, from Mankato,
agreed to provide teachers to the School. The first six of these
sisters arrived on August 20th, 1957 and due to delays in
construction of the convent were housed in two classrooms until
April 1958. The new school opened on September 3rd, 1957 with an
enrollment of 235 students. The church building itself was built in
1960-61 and has since been renovated.
The parish is named after Saint Anne, the grandmother of Jesus
and the Mother of Mary. We have no certain knowledge of Saint Anne.
She is not mentioned in the New Testament, and we must depend on
apocryphal literature, chiefly the Protoevangelium of
James, which dates back only to the second century. In this
document we are told that Anne, wife of Joachim, was advanced in
years and that her prayers for a child had not been answered. Once
as she prayed beneath a laurel tree near her home in Galilee, an
angel appeared and said to her, “Anne, the Lord hath heard
thy prayer and thou shalt conceive and bring forth, and thy seed
shall be spoken of in all the world.” Anne replied, “As
the Lord my God liveth, if I beget either male or female, I will
bring it as a gift to the Lord my God; and it shall minister to Him
in holy things all the days of its life.” And thus Anne
became the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The devotion of St. Anne was known in the East in the fifth
century, but it was not diffused in the West until the thirteenth.
A shrine at Douai, in northern France, was one of the early centers
of the devotion. In 1382 her feast was extended to the whole
Western Church, and she became very popular, especially in France.
Her two most famous shrines are at St. Anne d'Auray in Brittany and
at St. Anne-de Beaupre in the province of Quebec. She is patroness
of housewives, women in labor, cabinet-makers, and miners. Her
emblem is a door. St. Anne has been frequently represented in art.
The name Anne derives from the Hebrew Hannah, meaning
“grace.” Saint Anne’s feast day is celebrated on
July 26th. (Taken from “Lives of Saints,” Published by
John J. Crawley & Co., Inc.)