The Redemptorists who run the pilgrimage 30 kilometres east of Quebec City say it wouldn’t be profitable for them to upgrade the facility, situated on grounds directly below the basilica, up to standards that met fire regulations and conformed to other safety standards.

“We had the fire inspectors in and it would cost about $800,000 to fix the building. The auberge is more than 50 years old and it needed a lot of work,” said rector Fr. Bernard Gauthier. “It is not wheelchair accessible or equipped for special-need patients who visit. We aren’t innkeepers. The writing has been on the wall for a while now.... We will concentrate our  resources on our primary mission as pilgrimage site.”

Ste. Anne de Beaupré becomes the first major pilgrimage site in Quebec to no longer provide a hostel for visitors.

The closure follows two years of uncertainty. The inn could accommodate about 250 tourists who paid $60 to bed down for a night. 

Last year the Redemptorists closed the hostel’s restaurant, cut many services and hired someone else to run the inn while they decided next steps. But the number of pilgrims has been declining. In February, the museum on the grounds of the basilica closed and in October the auberge closed “temporarily.”

Early this month the Redemptorists decided not to re-open it.

“We’ve advised tour groups of our decision. Some of them aren’t too happy, but others understand,” said vice-rector Assunta Bouchard. “We will be taking steps in the months ahead to see whether we can work with hotels and motels in the area to offer reasonable accommodation to those who need it.”

Although the Redemptorists are in a legal fight with the municipality, which wants to tax the auberge, Gauthier says the court proceedings had “absolutely nothing to do with the decision” to close the hostel. The town lost its bid to collect taxes, but the case remains before the courts under appeal.

To complicate matters, attendance at the basilica dropped after 2012 when the shrine levied a $2 admission fee, which was subsequently dropped. 

“For years we didn’t have a way to conduct an accurate head count, but we always said that we got between 1.2 and 1.5 million visitors each year,” said Gauthier. “We no longer charge the admission fee. All I can say is that we saw a drop in the number of visitors when we charged them to come into the shrine.”

In addition, the holy stairs leading to the building were closed for repairs in 2016, turning some tourists away. And last year, the Ahearn Memorial Pilgrimage, which brought hundreds of pilgrims from the United States to Ste. Anne’s each year for almost a century, announced it would no longer be returning on a regular basis. 

Ste. Anne de Beaupré grew out of a chapel dedicated to Quebec’s patron saint. The original chapel, built in 1658, was enlarged several times over the centuries and, in 1876, the first basilica opened for worship. It burned in 1922 and was replaced in 1926 with the church that now stands.

The future of the building that housed the museum and the hostel remains uncertain. One possibility being considered is that the Redemptorists might move out of their monastery and remodel the auberge as a residence.