Joliet Diocese says sale of St. Anne church will support newly merged parish

Crest Hill — The Diocese of Joliet has confirmed that the proceeds from the sale of the former St. Anne church building in Crest Hill will go to support the recently consolidated St. Ambrose & St. Anne Parish.

St. Anne was closed in June and merged with neighboring St. Ambrose parish in Crest Hill using the St. Ambrose facilities. It was one of several churches closed within the Joliet deanery as part of its “Targeted Restructuring Plan.”

After a listing for the 1.05-acre property at 1800 Dearborn St. was posted on Coldwell Bank’s Real Estate website, a spokesperson for the diocese told the Herald-News that “the new parish and the Diocese decided in late 2024 to sell the now-closed building and property formerly known as St. Anne Parish.” Adding that “proceeds from the sale will go directly to the newly formed parish of St. Ambrose & St. Anne Parish in Crest Hill, Illinois.”

While the diocese said in its announcement of the restructuring plan in January that “the diocese has no plans to sell any real estate in the Joliet deanery at this time,” its communications office now states that “as parish teams reviewed factual information including numbers of active parishioners, demographics, financial contributions, repair and maintenance costs of older buildings, restructuring teams often reached a consensus that keeping a building open or maintained was no longer a viable option.”

The listing, which was posted Nov. 25, is asking for $500,000 for the property, which includes the 300-seat church as well as the two attached halls and kitchen facilities, and the 50-car parking lot. It also describes the property as “very well maintained and surrounded by extremely nice homes.”

St. Anne is the second church property to be placed on the market in recent months after the diocese’s consolidation and restructuring plan that went into effect this summer.

St. Jude in Joliet, which merged with St. Paul into what is now Queen of the Apostles parish, was placed on the market earlier this fall. The 7-acre property at 2200 McDonough St. in Joliet – including the former school, church, rectory, gymnasium, chapel and convent – was listed on Karges Real Estate’s website with an asking price of $1.75 million.

Although the listing describes the property as “commercial,” it does not mention any potential site uses for the former St. Anne church, unlike the St. Jude listing, which suggested the property as “an ideal theater space.”

Although it was listed in September, the St. Jude building also is still on the market.

When the St. Jude buildings were put on the market, diocese general counsel Mary Ann McLean said that the decision was reached sometime after the initial announcement was made in January as the result of “listening sessions” between members of the St. Jude and St. Paul communities and the diocese restructuring team.

Like St. Jude, the former St. Anne building officially was decreed by Bishop Ronald Hicks to be reduced to “profane but not sordid use” in August, although no large public announcement was made at the time by the diocese.

St. Jude’s decree was issued Aug. 15, while the St. Anne decree was issued Aug. 25.

The decree paved the way for the buildings to be sold for other purposes, although it is unclear whether all the decommissioned churches were similarly decreed or only ones planned for sale.