Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary

Saint Anne was the wife of Saint Joachim, mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and grandmother of Jesus our Redeemer. She was a Jewish woman who lived in Sephoris near Nazareth in Galilee and then in Jerusalem in Judea.

The Bible tells us nothing about the parents of the Virgin Mary. The oldest document mentioning her is the apocryphal Gospel of James, which contains a Judean tradition dating back to the first half of the second century.

The devotion to St. Anne developed first in the East, in parallel to the veneration of the Virgin Mary, especially in the mystery of her Immaculate Conception, her Nativity and her Presentation in the Temple.

Throughout the world, Saint Anne is venerated and prayed to in many religious places, basilicas, churches and chapels. The most famous ones are: in Rome, at the parish church of Saint Anne in the Vatican; in Jerusalem; in Quebec at the basilica of Saint Anne de Beaupré; in the Republic of the Congo (Africa), at the church of Saint Anne in Brazzaville; in Asia, in Burma and in Ceylon.

In France, the first shrine dedicated to St. Anne dates back to the 11th century. It is the ancient cathedral of Apt in the Vaucluse department, where the relics of St. Anne are kept.

In Brittany, the veneration of Saint Anne, and especially in the region of Auray, is historically linked to the first evangelization of Armorica, in the 7th and 8th centuries.

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