St. Anne Catholic Church is a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

parish of the

Archdiocese of Chicago The Archdiocese of Chicago () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction, an archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church located in Northeastern Illinois, in the United States. The Vatican erected it as a diocese in 1843 and elevated it to an ar ...

located in suburban

Barrington, Illinois Barrington is a village in Cook County, Illinois, Cook and Lake County, Illinois, Lake counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. The population was 10,722 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. A northwest suburb of Chicago, the area featu ...

approximately thirty-two miles northwest of Chicago. Originally dedicated in 1884, St. Anne is the only Catholic parish in the Barrington area. In 2000, the church was expanded significantly to accommodate its 3,700+ registered parishioner families; at the time, its Campus Development Plan was the largest in the modern history of the Archdiocese.St. Anne Barrington
/ref> Rev. John Trout is the current

pastor A pastor (abbreviated to "Ps","Pr", "Pstr.", "Ptr." or "Psa" (both singular), or "Ps" (plural)) is the leader of a Christianity, Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutherani ...

, replacing Rev. Bernard J. Pietrzak, who served the community through 2023.

History

Early history

St. Anne's history dates to the 1860s, when

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thoma ...

priests celebrated the Mass in private Barrington homes, then a largely rural area. The original St. Anne Church was dedicated in 1884, and St. Anne's maintained a resident pastor beginning in 1905. St. Anne was named for

St. Anne According to apocrypha, as well as Christian and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary, the wife of Joachim and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the Bible's canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's na ...

, the mother of the

Virgin Mary Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under titles of Mary, mother of Jesus, various titles such as Perpetual virginity ...

. In or around 1949, St. Anne dedicated a new church at the southeast corner of Franklin and Ela Streets. The church served as the main worship space for the parish until the construction of the current St. Anne campus.

Campus Development Plan

In 1995, St. Anne approached several design firms regarding a multimillion-dollar update and expansion of its undersized facilities. The parish had outgrown its original church building by such a wide margin that some weekly Masses were held in the school gymnasium. After careful consideration, parish leaders chose lead architect RuckPate and YHR Partners to jointly facilitate a comprehensive master plan for the parish expansion. YHR and RuckPate designed the new worship space to employ non-traditional,

antiphonal An antiphonary or antiphonal is one of the liturgical books intended for use (i.e. in the liturgical choir), and originally characterized, as its name implies, by the assignment to it principally of the antiphons used in various parts of the L ...

seating with a shallow

mezzanine A mezzanine (; or in Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft with non-sloped ...

to maintain the intimacy of the worship area. The project also included improvements to other parish families on site for fellowship, religious education, parochial education, youth activities, senior activities, outreach ministries, and administration functions. The parish dedicated the new building on April 30, 2000. Later that year, the parish received the 2000 Association of Licensed Architects Design Award. Among numerous other neo-Gothic artworks, the newly constructed Worship Space features twelve near life-size sculptures of saints by

Jay Hall Carpenter Jay Hall Carpenter (born 1961), is an American sculptor, perhaps best known as creator of 500 sculptures for the Washington National Cathedral The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Episcopal Diocese of Washingto ...

Features

In 2000, the newly expanded church received the Association of Licensed Architects Award of Excellence in Architecture for its limestone and neo-Gothic design.Design Awards
The current St. Anne campus features a 1300-seat, two-story Worship Space, a 160-seat chapel (site of the church dedicated in 1949), and the St. Anne School for elementary education. The Campus also contains a Gathering Space and Parish Library, in addition to the parish rectory and administrative offices. Since its expansion, the parish has grown to over 4,000 registered member families. Until recently, the church's longest-subscribing parishioner was Jim Hollister, who had been registered with the parish since his baptism in 1925 and died in Barrington in November 2009.

St. Anne School

In 1927, the

Sisters of Mercy The Sisters of Mercy is a religious institute for women in the Catholic Church. It was founded in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland, by Catherine McAuley. In 2019, the institute had about 6,200 Religious sister, sisters worldwide, organized into a number ...

founded and staffed the first St. Anne School, one of the earliest

parochial schools A parochial school is a private primary or secondary school affiliated with a religious organization, and whose curriculum includes general religious education in addition to secular subjects, such as science, mathematics and language arts. The w ...

in Lake County. Three years later, the School Sisters of St. Francis took charge of the school and still minister in the parish today. The co-educational school numbers approximately 500 students, teaching children from three-year-old preschool through eighth grade. The U.S.

Department of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

has recognized St. Anne's School as a

Blue Ribbon School The National Blue Ribbon Schools Program is a United States Department of Education award program that recognizes exemplary public and non-public schools on a yearly basis. Using standards of excellence evidenced by student achievement measures, ...

Image gallery

File:St. Anne Catholic Community, Barrington, Illinois - Chapel Exterior.jpg, Exterior of the Daily Mass Chapel, with seating for 160. File:Chapel Interior2.jpg, Interior of the Daily Mass Chapel. Image:Facing_South.jpg, The Chapel Fountain and Entrance to the Gathering and Worship Spaces as seen from the north. Image:St. Anne Catholic Community, main entrance.jpg, Worship Space entrance. Image:Worship_Space_Entrance.jpg, Entrance from the Gathering Space to the Worship Space. Image:Worship_Space_Font.jpg, 1300-seat Worship Space, including baptismal font. Image:Worship_Space_East.jpg, East side of the Worship Space, featuring sculptures by Jay Hall Carpenter. Image:Worship_Space_West.jpg, West side of the Worship Space, including lectern.

References

External links

Website of St. Anne Catholic CommunityWebsite of St. Anne School
with image gallery of St. Anne redevelopment {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Anne Catholic Community, Barrington, Illinois Churches in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago Buildings and structures in Barrington, Illinois Churches in Cook County, Illinois Churches in Lake County, Illinois Religious organizations established in 1884