Brother Andre: Miracle man of Mount Royal

Door keeper to become saint on October 17 

St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal sits on Mount Royal, the city's highest hill. The oratory is bigger than Notre Dame, its dome only slightly smaller than St. Peter's. It took six master architects 52 years—from 1915 to 1967—to erect, and among its accouterments are the carillon built for the Eiffel Tower, one of the world's largest organs, two wax museums, three banks of escalators, acres of free parking and a restaurant supervised by a full-time French chef.

It is three hundred and sixty-one feet high, taller than either Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York or the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Its girth is so massive that it could hold within itself any one of most of the world’s great shrines, including Saint Anne de Beaupré and Saint Paul of London. The cross atop its domed roof can be seen for miles around, guiding the millions of pilgrims who come there each year.

If you were to ask any Canadian for the name of the person who built this magnificent House of God, you would be told, “Brother André.” Yet, this little lay brother’s name does not appear on any of the official records of the building of the Oratory. He was only a porter — a doorman — at a college owned and operated by his religious congregation.

Brother André Bessette of Montreal on October 17 will become the first Canadian-born male saint.

Brother Andre (August 9, 1845 – January 6, 1937) is credited with thousands of reported miraculous healings. He was declared venerable in 1978 and was beatified in 1982. Pope Benedict XVI approved sainthood for Blessed Andre on Friday, February 19, 2010, with formal canonization scheduled for Sunday, October 17, 2010.

An all-night prayer vigil will be held in the Crypt Church of Montreal's St. Joseph's Oratory during the night of Oct. 16-17, with the canonization being shown live from Rome on a big-screen TV in the Oratory's Crypt Church beginning at 4 a.m.

Brother Andre, a semiliterate French-Canadian orphan named Alfred Bessette, was better known as "Brother André, the miracle man of Mount Royal." As a religious brother, Bessette served for 40 years as doorkeeper and handyman of Notre Dame College, a boys' school at the foot of the hill. He was humble, devout and frail, a sufferer from chronic dyspepsia. But he had, it is claimed, miraculous healing powers.

By invoking the favors of St. Joseph, his patron saint, and handing out bottles of burned sacramental olive oil, Brother André reportedly cured as many as 15,000 crippled, blind and dying pilgrims a year. When he died in 1937, at the age of 91, half a million people filed past his bier.

See the Knights of Columbus article on Brother Andre.

http://www.kofc.org/un/eb/en/columbia/detail/2010_09_bessette.html

Read a definitive article on Catholicism.org