Detroit — As Msgr. Russell Kohler gave his homily during a Monday morning Mass inside the chapel of Ste. Anne de Detroit Parish on July 22, he looked out into a sea of faces that were notable for two reasons.
First, the tiny chapel was packed. As nearly 70 of the faithful crowded into the chapel where Fr. Gabriel Richard, the 19th century priest and pioneer whose work led to the founding of many Detroit-area institutions, is laid to rest, there was hardly a seat to be had.
Second, the faces were as diverse as the history of the city that was founded under the protection of the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary all the way back in 1701. And that’s a legacy the pastor of Detroit’s oldest parish wants to preserve.
During the middle of Ste. Anne’s annual novena to its patroness, which concludes July 26, the feast day of St. Anne and St. Joachim — Our Lady’s parents — seeing the chapel so full of people is a familiar sight. It’s perhaps taken on a bit more significance since 2011, when Pope Benedict XVI officially declared St. Anne the patroness of the entire Archdiocese of Detroit at the request of Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, but the annual novena has been important to the multicultural parish on the banks of the Detroit River, near Mexicantown in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, for more than a century.
And not just to Catholics, either. As Msgr. Kohler spoke July 22, he noted that even people of other faiths, such as Muslims, honor the mother of the Virgin Mary as a woman of faith and devotion.
“I had a woman approach me after the novena and asked me, ‘Father, would you pray with me?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ Then she said, ‘I’m Muslim,’” Msgr. Kohler related. “These Marian feasts bring together people of diverse faiths. They don’t have this western spirit of being driven apart by differences in faith. Mary draws us together.”
The schedule of the annual novena shows off another universal side of St. Anne. The nine-day prayer vigil includes Masses and traditions spanning a wide range of diverse ethnicities, starting with Portuguese on the novena’s first day and continuing with Latino, Ukrainian, Croatian, French, Italian, African-American, Polish and Irish languages, songs, costumes and rites. On July 23, the “ethnic” Mass focused not on a particular race or nationality, but on the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick and the healing of all cultures and peoples. Concluding the novena on the feast day itself, Archbishop Vigneron was to celebrate the 7 p.m. Mass and kick off a parish fiesta.
On July 25, the eve of the feast day, the archbishop was scheduled to participate in an interfaith prayer service alongside Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Nicholas at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Detroit. Although the vigil was after The Michigan Catholic’s press deadline, last year the two leaders of their respective faith communities exchanged icons of St. Anne as a sign of solidarity and faith in the protection of the grandmother of Christ.
As part of the Year of Faith, Archbishop Vigneron designated Ste. Anne de Detroit as one of eight pilgrimage sites where the faithful can receive a plenary indulgence this year.
“Through the wisdom of age, the Church has come to see that extraordinary acts of faith, in turn, bring about extraordinary grace,” the archbishop wrote in designating the eight pilgrimage sites.
At Ste. Anne de Detroit, the founding church of the archdiocese, the hope is that extraordinary faith is the catalyst that brings a diverse city back together, under the watchful patronage of the woman who gave the world the first Christian, the Mother of God and the model of extraordinary faith.
