FALL RIVER – Parishioners will say farewell to St. Anne’s Church on Sunday, Nov. 25, as the iconic landmark closes its doors after 10 a.m. Mass.

St. Anne’s, with its grand upper church and more humble basement shrine, is said to have been a site where miraculous faith healings have occurred through the years. In operation since 1895, the church has undoubtedly been a sacred place for generations of families and the site for thousands of baptisms, weddings and funerals through the decades.

Bishop Edgar Da Cunha announced in October that the church would close due to costly repairs, a dwindling congregation, and a decrease in diocesan priests, as part of a reorganization effort of the Fall River Diocese. A group, the St. Anne’s Preservation Society, has since formed with a plan to appeal the bishop’s decision and re-open as a sacred shrine in the future.

For now, the fate and history of St. Anne’s will be sealed when the doors are locked after last Mass.

The Herald News went through its archives and other documents and pulled together some interesting facts about St. Anne’s Church and its long history in Fall River.

1. The stone, marked “Pierre De Ste. Anne Jerusalem,” that stands before the statue of St. Anne in the lower shrine, is from St. Anne’s Church in Bethesda, Jerusalem. A crusader church built between 1131 and 1138 AD, St. Anne’s was built over the traditional site of the birthplace of Anne, mother of Mary. Many who were blind, disabled, lame and paralyzed were said to have been healed there. People make pilgrimages to St. Anne’s in Jerusalem to this day. Next to the church is the Bethesda Pool, where Jesus was said to have healed a paralytic (John 5:1-15).

2. The first miracle at St. Anne’s Church in Fall River. Father Adrien de Montaubricq of Bordeau France came to the city in 1869 to help form the first French-speaking parish. On March 20, 1870, when the first cornerstone was being blessed, he and some 100 parishioners standing on a platform were injured when it collapsed. He prayed to St. Anne for aid and to help him recuperate so he could carry on building the church. In return, he promised St. Anne his church would be dedicated to her. The church was named St. Anne’s and opened two months later.

3. Belgian sculptor Maestro Stalzenburg was commissioned by St. Anne’s Church to carve a statue of St. Anne from a single block of wood. It was received in 1893 and sent to Chicago for public display at the World’s Fair. It now resides in the upper church.

4. Sainte Concorde, the wax statue in the shrine, along with relics from the Catacombs of Priscilla in Rome, was among the prized possessions of the shrine’s Dominican founders who fled France and came here as refugees in 1893. Saint Concorde died a martyr in 258 AD when she was flogged to death for becoming a Christian.

5. The original windows at St. Anne’s Church were made of a simple colored glass to keep costs down when the church was built. They were replaced with stained glass by E. Rault of Rennes, France and set between 1959 and 1961.

6. As a shine, St. Anne’s is considered to be a privileged center of divine favors, and a special place where God favors those who come from great distances to pray. Because St. Anne was the mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus, she is thought to be the object of God’s special favor.

7. The first Mass was celebrated in the lower church shrine on Christmas Day in 1895. Construction on the upper church was halted until 1902. The church was dedicated on July 4, 1906. The original church was founded in 1869 at the corner of Hunter and William streets.

8. From 1902 forward, special devotions were made to St. Anne. Pilgrims from parishes near and far organized groups of 500 to 1,000 and made an annual pilgrimage to St. Anne’s Church on foot, by rail and by boat.

9. A marble altar and baptismal font in the sanctuary was imported from Italy in the late 1950s.

10. There are three priests entombed in St. Anne’s Shrine. Buried there are Father Sauval, who arrived in Fall River as a French Dominican on Nov. 22, 1887, at the age of 39, and took on the project in 1892 to build the grand St. Anne’s Church on South Main Street; Father Marchildon, known as the “apostle” of St. Anne’s Shrine, and known to have touched thousands with his kindness and compassion; and Father Terrien. The Herald News was unable to find information about Terrien.

11. The Fall River Diocese purchased St. Anne’s Church from the Dominican Fathers of the Canadian Province in the 1970s for $1, when the Dominicans could no longer staff the church.

12. When St. Anne’s Church was dedicated in 1906, some 2,000 people attended the ceremony, according to Herald News archives. It boasted 500 to 600 member families at the time. Weekend Masses have declined over time, from 1,368 in 1991 to 1,182 in 2002, down again to 485 in 2013, and to 378 in 2017, according to the Fall River Diocese.

13. St. Anne’s was built using local granite and Vermont blue marble. Faberge egg shaped bell towers rise to 155 feet above ground. The cost to build such a structure today would amount to $80 to $100 million, according to architect Tony Dias.

14. The shrine in 2007 underwent a $250,000 restoration effort using funds collected in roughly a year by the St. Anne’s Shrine Historical Restoration Committee. Before that, some work had been done in the 1990s and the 1960s.

15. The letters D.O.M. carved into the marble church cornerstone are Latin for “Deo Optimo Magnifico,” translated as “only the biggest and best for God.”

16. St. Anne’s Church, built with donations and labor from the French Canadian population in Fall River, was the first French parish in southeastern Massachusetts and the second Catholic church in Fall River, according to Herald News archives. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and has been a national shrine to the mother of Mary since 1892.

Email Deborah Allard at dallard@heraldnews.com.