“Prayer, Courage, Faith and Love will build our City of God.”

A Brief History
 
   The founders of St. Anna Church were pilgrims  They had travelled from the different paese of their homeland Italy---in the early years of the twentieth century when such a journey was likely to mean never going back---to seek a better life, for themselves and especially for their children and grandchildren.  And as they settled here in Leominster, struggling as most immigrants initially do to satisfy their material needs, meeting their spiritual needs grew into a passion: they became determined to establish a parish where their language was understood and religious traditions could still thrive.  Many were the hopeful; but the first to act on this hope was a woman named Vittoria Novelli, who way back in 1923 called together a group of Italo-American women to hold regular meetings and fundraisers toward the goal, the foundations of the St. Anna Society (which continues to benefit the parish today, thus soon to mark ninety years). Those who got involved grew in number, and over the next fourteen years and more, through benefits and festivals barbeques and raffles and pledge drives---and these are the years surrounding the Great Depression---they sacrificed their earnings and time for their dream of a spiritual home in their new land.  
 
   As a result of their staunch appeals to the diocesan bishop (then of Springfield), a young priest---a Holy Cross grad who had studied for priesthood in Rome, and therefore knew Italian---was sent to the territorial parish of St. Leo in 1935 to tend them.  Fr. John Gannon soon became their beloved Padre Gannoni, who would in 1937 become entrusted with St. Anna, first a mission church of St. Leo’s, and then be named Administrator in 1939 when St. Anna became its own parish.  Work still needed to be done to fulfill parish needs and roles, and St. Anna’s people of first and second generation remained steadfast in support and service to their new church.  A nice home across the street from the church was purchased and converted to a rectory in 1940; total church renovations were accomplished in 1950; a parochial school was begun in newly sectioned classrooms in the church hall in 1953; a school building was raised and dedicated in 1957; a home adjacent to the church was converted to a convent in 1961 for the Venerini Sisters who lovingly staffed the school and faithfully served the parish in several other ways as well.  And a new generation of dedicated parishioners in the mid-80’s galvanized a restoration of St. Anna Church for her fiftieth anniversary.
 
  A pilgrim’s journey sometimes ends before the dream is realized.  Vittoria Novelli died in 1936, the year before the one in which came at last blessed day whose seventy-fifth anniversary we mark today.  But she and the many men and women who shared her material and spiritual pilgrimage---the founders of this parish---have inspired now several generations who followed, with the testimony that faith’s journey here is worth the work of travelling for what and where it all leads to, with God’s gracious will for the benessere of us all.  Fr. Gannon called his beloved parishioners “a people who never forget God,” who generated a heritage of “faithful love and practice of their Catholic Faith, love and example to their families, and allegiance and loyalty to America and to Leominster”; and as such---in the words of fourth Pastor Leo Battista in leading the parish’s Golden Jubilee twenty-five years ago---“it becomes now our work to share it and to pass it on to the generations that will follow.”    ~  Jack Siciliano