When plaster fell to the floor from an upper wall in the cavernous upper church during Sunday Mass in May 2015, it was the beginning of the end for St. Anne Shrine in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Or was it just the beginning of something new? The bishop closed the upper church, built to accommodate around 2,500 people, declaring it unsafe. The shrine in the basement hung on for a few more years, but the bishop closed that, too, in November 2018.

At this point, this story might sound familiar, of a type the Register has described before: Catholic immigrants build grand church in bustling manufacturing city around 1900; city grows; parish thrives; manufacturing declines; neighborhood loses population; interest in Catholicism wanes; Mass attendance falls; building falls into disrepair; repair costs skyrocket; bishop closes church.

But something different is happening in Fall River. People who grew up going to St. Anne’s are saving it — not through canon law, but through stone and mortar. They went to the bishop with a plan: Give us a lease on the building and let us raise money piecemeal to fix it and restore it over time.

The bishop said, “Yes.”

On July 4, 2019, the St Anne’s Shrine Preservation Society took possession of the property with a 10-year lease.

“It was so sad hearing that St. Anne’s would close. I didn’t know what I could do, but I knew that I had to do something,” said Jeff Montigny, 62, a recently retired gas utility engineering manager who serves as president of the preservation society.

“We all feel like we were called to do this. There was no way I could just sit at home and watch this place close,” he said.

A Gargantuan Task

But why?

An architectural consultant told the diocese it would cost more than $13 million to renovate the building — and that it would take years to do it.

Water was getting through the flashing and through holes in the gutter between the edge of the roof and the top of the walls. Ground water frequently invaded the basement.

“When we took over, it was up to our ankles. We were like, ‘What did we get ourselves into?’” Montigny recounted to the Register.

Even now, several years into the restoration, volunteers use four sump pumps to try to keep the church dry.

Given those — and many other — problems, why not just let it go?

St. Anne’s preservers describe a hold the church has on their hearts; for some of them, precious memories date back to when they served as altar boys decades ago, for 25 cents a Mass.

Bryan Boyle, who has close family ties to the shrine and used to go there as a kid, was living in Pennsylvania — three states away — when he heard about locals in Fall River trying to save St. Anne’s. So he moved back to try to help. He hadn’t lived in the area since 1961.

“If you get the impression we love this place, it’s because we do,” said Boyle, 68, a retired security engineer for IBM who serves as sacristan and liturgy coordinator at St. Anne’s.

Part of the draw is beauty.

On the outside, 160-foot-tall twin steeples and Romanesque rounded arches made of Vermont blue marble soar above the city; and on the inside, sharp light colors of the walls and statues contrast with the reds, blues and yellows of the stained-glass windows and the brown vaulted wooden ceiling high above. The upper church, which remains closed to the public, is decrepit but still magnificent. To enter is to stare.

Bob Gauvin, 70, co-founder and current vice president of the preservation society and a retired chief financial officer at an abrasives manufacturer in Fall River, estimates that it would cost $80 to $100 million to build a similar church nowadays — if you could find the craftsmen, which you couldn’t.

“There’ll never be a building like this in this area ever again,” Gauvin said.

He also feels this one has more work to do.

“I told the bishop, ‘This was not built for a hundred years. It was built for 500 years,’” Gauvin said.

Place of Healing — and Peace

Another draw: the miracles.

Well before the French-Canadian parish completed the present upper church in the south end of Fall River in 1906, the basement shrine to St. Anne (the mother of Mary and therefore grandmother of Jesus) became a pilgrimage site known for explanation-defying healings, starting in the 1890s.

One example: In July 1902, a little girl named Vilida Desruisseau, youngest of four in a French-Canadian immigrant family who lived in nearby New Bedford, visited St. Anne’s. She had been suffering from terrible pain in her hip, leg and foot since being injured in a fall more than a year and a half before.

“She went with her mother to Fall River, and it was during Communion that she felt better and was first able to stand alone,” her pastor told a reporter, amazed that she could walk and play without crutches, braces or pain, according to The Fall River Daily Evening News, a newspaper of the time.

The Dominicans who ran St. Anne’s during its first nine decades described scores of reported healings in what they called the “Book of Miracles.” While most or possibly all have never been investigated by the Catholic Church, St. Anne’s reputation as a place of healing is well known in the area.

Moreover, for decades, it attracted visitors searching for something else.

“When you go into the building, there’s a great peace. Some places are more peaceful than others because of all of the prayers that have gone up there,” said Father Edward Murphy, a native of County Cork in Ireland and a priest of the Diocese of Fall River who prayed before the exposed Eucharist at St. Anne’s the morning of his ordination at the nearby cathedral in 1998.

“People appreciate having it there. It’s a refuge for the people,” he said.

If You Save It, They Will Come

Fall River is best known for the murders of Lizzie Borden’s parents in 1892, which Lizzie may or may not have committed. Her father, Andrew Borden, was a corporate official of several textile mills at a time when Fall River (motto: “We’ll Try”) was one of the richest cities in the United States.

Most of St. Anne’s parishioners around that time were at the opposite end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Yet they built the most striking building in the city. And over a statue above the front entrance, the designers of the church put in big letters “D.O.M.” — short for Deo Optimo Maximo, which can be translated “To God, the Best and Greatest.”

More than a century later, preservationists figured out early in the process that it wouldn’t cost as much to fix St. Anne’s as initially thought. The roof work, for instance, may end up costing about $1 million instead of the originally estimated $4 million.

Even so, Fall River, with a population of about 95,000, is now a poor city, among the bottom 10 municipalities in Massachusetts in per capita income. How can you possibly raise enough?

Well …

Donations have come in steadily: from local residents, from past residents, from people with ties to a particular saint’s statue or a particular side chapel. Some contractors have donated their labor, charging only for the cost of the materials. The Dominicans of Providence College are paying to restore a side chapel where three of their priests who served at the shrine are buried; a rededication Mass there is scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday, May 3.

The city government of Fall River has provided grants for the exterior of the building, taken from state Community Preservation Act funds, which earmark a local property tax surcharge plus state matching funds to promote historic preservation (among other things).

A recurring theme in the process is obstacles that appear and then disappear.

“Things have been difficult, and then the problem goes way,” Montigny said.

The basement is now in better shape than it has been in decades.

Up top, recently workers have been finishing the gutter and downspout and slate repair work on the north side of the roof, Montigny told the Register.

Once the roof and mortar repointing are finished, water should stop infiltrating the building, which means interior work can begin in the upper church, which has been closed to the public for nearly 10 years.

Where once the preservation society hoped to finish by 2029, now its members think a grand reopening might happen in the next year or two.

That seemed highly unlikely in 2019.

“I remember thinking, ‘Okay, we’ll give them a chance and see how it goes’,” Fall River Bishop Edgar da Cunha told the Register. “I wasn’t sure they’d be able to do it, but there was enough willingness and good faith and enthusiasm, I felt they deserved a chance.”

“Honestly, I’m grateful for their commitment and efforts, because they’ve done more than I thought was possible in the time that they’ve had. They have accomplished a lot,” the bishop said.

A Place of Prayer, Amid the Work

St. Anne’s isn’t a parish anymore. But it’s not a museum either.

From the beginning of the restoration effort, those trying to preserve St. Anne’s have re-made it into a place of prayer. They keep the basement shrine open much of the daytime hours, including a Eucharistic chapel with the Blessed Sacrament exposed.

Prayer candles are popular. Volunteers at St. Anne’s say it’s now the largest Catholic indoor votive candle shrine in southern New England, taking in about $6,000 a month in donations for them, which helps pay for the utilities.

A Holy Hour takes place at 2 p.m. every first Sunday of the month, with a Rosary, confession, exposition and Benediction. On July 26, St. Anne’s feast day, a public Mass is celebrated, preceded by a novena, and, this year, to be followed by a procession. (The parish’s yearly novena to St. Anne began in 1872, Boyle said.)

Father Murphy, the shrine’s chaplain, says a healing Mass in the basement shrine the third Thursday of the month, with a Rosary at 6 p.m., followed by Mass at 6:30.

He described the church as an aid to evangelization.

“To look at it from a distance, you know that this building was built to last. It’s a towering, powerful testimony to the faith of the people,” Father Murphy said. “And it’s inviting — inviting to come closer.”

Drivers going west over the Braga Bridge over the Taunton River coming into the city who look to the right are immediately drawn to the twin spires, especially at night, when the church is lit up. In the southern part of Fall River, St. Anne’s doesn’t just dominate the skyline — it is the skyline.

Even so, it’s still just a building. The Register asked Boyle what makes saving this building so important.

“Fall River’s ugly,” Boyle said.

“I’m sorry,” he added, turning to the other men in the room. “It’s my hometown. It’s your hometown. It’s an ugly town.”

Aging industrial buildings and dilapidated homes are common in the city, including the neighborhood of St. Anne’s, where utility wires and satellite television dishes abound.

“In the midst of all of this, there’s St. Anne’s,” Boyle said, adding of the populace, “So it gives them hope.”