Shrine of St. Anne (All Saints - Todos los Santos Parish)

The French-Catholic community of Waterbury first worshipped together at the old Universalist Trinity chapel on Grand Street. In April 1886 Bishop Lawrence S. McMahon appointed Father Joseph W. Fones of Watertown to organize a national parish for them; about two weeks later Father Fones celebrated the first Mass at the Grand Street hall. The largely French-Canadian immigrants from Quebec chose St. Anne, mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the patroness of the new parish. A first church was built on Dover Street in 1888–1889 and dedicated January 27, 1889. By the early 1900s the congregation had outgrown the Dover Street building. Construction of the present monumental church on South Main Street began in 1906; the basement was finished by 1910 and was pressed into use for services. Completion was delayed both by the need to accumulate funds — Ruth Glasser, curator of the Mattatuck Museum's 'In the Shadow of St. Anne's' exhibit, observed that 'this church was literally built on the nickels and dimes of its congregation' — and by the First World War. The finished church was dedicated on December 17, 1922 by Bishop John J. Nilan of the Diocese of Hartford. Designed by the Boston firm Chickering & O'Connell in the French Gothic Revival style and built by the Granite Construction Company of Fall River, Massachusetts, it is steel-framed, clad in brick, with a granite base and a superstructure of Vermont blue marble. Two roughly 100-foot marble-clad steeples and a copper-topped dome made it a landmark of the Waterbury skyline for nearly a century. The interior was devastated by smoke and fire in 1971 and again in 1978. With limited resources, the parish covered the blackened stenciling, murals and silver-leaf ornament in flat gray paint. Restoration began in earnest in 2004 with the founding of the Friends of St. Anne, an independent citizens' committee led by Ron Bouchard, which raised funds and engaged the John Canning Painting and Restoration Studio. Their work uncovered a sophisticated, deliberately feminine decorative scheme — pastel pinks, silver leaf, fleur-de-lis ornament — appropriate to a Marian shrine. In 2005 the church was officially elevated to the Shrine of Saint Anne for Mothers, and relics attributed to St. Anne were installed in matching shrines on either side of the sanctuary. Beginning in the 1980s, maintenance of the twin steeples had been an ongoing concern; a fiberglass shell had even been installed over the brick to fight water infiltration. In 2018 marble blocks fell from the spires onto the public sidewalk, forcing an emergency closure and the installation of protective netting. Engineer's reports concluded the underlying brick cores were failing; rather than attempt a costly in-place rebuild, All Saints Parish decided to dismantle the towers. Beginning in July 2019 each exterior marble block was carefully numbered and catalogued, and both original crosses were preserved. Dismantling cost about $900,000; rebuilding the spires is estimated at roughly $5 million, and they remain in storage awaiting that campaign. In June 2017 Archbishop Leonard Blair's sweeping restructuring of the Archdiocese of Hartford merged six Waterbury parishes — St. Anne, Our Lady of Lourdes, Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazón, St. Stanislaus Kostka, St. Margaret of Scotland, and St. Lucy — into one entity, All Saints / Todos los Santos Parish. The Shrine of St. Anne and Our Lady of Lourdes (309 South Main Street) were retained as active worship sites; the other four buildings were closed. In 2023 St. Francis Xavier Church (625 Baldwin Street) was added as a third site. The parish was described at its 2017 inauguration as a 'mission to' rather than 'maintenance of' parish, and today the Shrine of St. Anne continues to draw worshippers, French-Canadian descendants, and pilgrims devoted to St. Anne as patroness of mothers.