{"id":94110,"date":"2026-01-23T00:24:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/94110\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T00:24:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:24:06","slug":"generations-of-faith-at-the-national-shrine-of-st-ann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/94110\/","title":{"rendered":"Generations of faith at the National Shrine of St. Ann"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Within the sacred walls of St. Ann\u2019s Monastery and Shrine Basilica <\/a>stands the original statue of St. Ann, the mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus. <\/p>\n

St. Ann is honored as the patron saint of unmarried women, housewives, expectant mothers, grandmothers, the poor, and coal miners. <\/p>\n

Father Richard Burke of St. Ann\u2019s Monastery guided us through the history of the monastery\u2019s founding and its dedication to St. Ann for over a century. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1902, the bishop of Scranton invited us to come and establish a monastery here, and September 8 of 1902, the bishop and our provincial superior met, and he brought him up to the top of this hill, and they chose the property which the new monastery would be built. And because September 8 is the feast of the birthday of Mary, we decided to name the new monastery after the mother of the mother of God,\u201d said Burke.<\/p>\n

\u201cLater, we discovered that St. Ann, especially in Bavaria and Germany, is the patron saint of coal miners. And, of course, everybody in this area in those days were coal miners, families of coal miners. So, it’s sort of fit like a glove over hand, that it happened that way,\u201d said Burke.<\/p>\n

Father Richard explained that as prayer gatherings grew at the monastery, the increasing number of participants led to the expansion into a basilica.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had prayers to St. Ann and to St. Paul of the Cross, who was our founder, and St. Gabriel, who was a young Passionist, who died of tuberculosis. So, we were having those, and some of the people in the neighborhood found out about it and said, can we say those prayers with you? And so, we said, sure, we do that. And Father John Joseph, was assigned to lead those people. They came, and they went into a little parlor in the front of the monastery, and they said their prayers every Monday,\u201d said Burke.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many people were coming that we didn’t have space for them anymore. And so, we pitched a tent out in the yard, and we had services in the tent. And people kept coming, and the crowd kept getting bigger. And that’s when we decided we better build a church. And so, in 1926, we built the basilica the way it was it was simply the shrine of St. Ann at that time,\u201d said Burke.<\/p>\n

Each year, St. Ann\u2019s Monastery holds a nine-day Solemn Novena<\/a> leading up to the feast of St. Ann. In 2025, it marked its 101st year, having never been canceled\u2014even during World War II or the COVID-19 pandemic. Father Richard said that people and priests travel from near and far to attend the Novena.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the Solemn Novena, the last time we did a survey, there were people from every one of the 48 contiguous states. And a lot of those people are people who are originally from this area and have moved off and moved to other places in the country, but they tend to take vacations around the time so they can at least make some of the Novena,\u201d said Burke.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of our diocesan priests come and help with confessions. And many of our Passionists from around the East Coast come to help. And they come from Puerto Rico, they come from Jamaica, West Indies, Toronto, Canada. They come from everywhere to help out,\u201d said Burke.<\/p>\n

Also, a devoted family travels from the southern region specifically to visit St. Ann.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a wonderful family from Texas. Whose mother is part of the parish here. And six teenage kids all came up from Texas for the Novena,\u201d said Burke.<\/p>\n

Father Richard said many who pray to St. Ann leave with powerful testimonies of answered prayers and remarkable miracles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a good number of married couples who will tell us that they met at the Novena to St. Ann, and they fell in love after they\u2019ve made the Novena to St Ann, and they got married. And they call themselves St. Ann husband and wife. And we have a very large number of what they call St. Ann babies. They\u2019ve been asking the Lord to help them have children, and they did.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke to one young couple from New York not long ago. And they had tried for several years, and they weren’t getting anywhere to have a family. They were told by their mother-in-law, come to St. Ann\u2019s and pray for St. Ann. So, she did, and then the following year they came back, and they had a little one. Two years later, they came back and they had a second little one, and they told me then they were going to be careful what they prayed for,\u201d said Burke.<\/p>\n

Prayer plays a vital role in supporting those in the community who face serious illnesses, says Father Richard.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who are very ill, we especially get a lot of requests for prayers for people dealing with cancer in their lives, because there’s so much of it around this area. So, we pray every day for all of those people and their needs,\u201d said Burke.<\/p>\n

The shrine of St. Ann<\/a> is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) \u2014 Within the sacred walls of St. Ann\u2019s Monastery and Shrine Basilica stands the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-94110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}