Saint André Bessette (1845-1937)

A family of the Haut-Richelieu

Alfred Bessette was born on 9 August 1845 in the parish of Saint-Grégoire-le-Grand, now Mont-Saint-Grégoire, south-east of Montreal, in the Haut-Richelieu region.^[6][7] He was the ninth of a family of thirteen children, four of whom died in infancy, born to Isaac Bessette (1807-1855), a carpenter, cooper and wheelwright by trade, and Clothilde Foisy (1814-1857).^[8] The family lived in real material poverty, typical of many French-Canadian households of the rural 19th century, but passed on to its children a robust faith: his mother instilled in him from an early age a devotion to Saint Joseph that would never leave him.^[9]

As a child, Alfred was frail and often ill, of so delicate a constitution that his very life was sometimes feared for.^[10] He nevertheless received a careful religious education for his background: he was confirmed on 7 June 1858 by Bishop Jean-Charles Prince, Bishop of Saint-Hyacinthe, and made his First Communion at the age of twelve, according to the custom of the time, before Saint Pius X's reform which would lower the age of First Communion at the beginning of the 20th century.^[11] His schooling, on the other hand, remained extremely rudimentary: he could barely read and could just about sign his name — a limitation that would stay with him all his life without ever diminishing his interior life.^[12]

Orphaned at twelve

On 20 February 1855, when Alfred was only nine years old, his father Isaac Bessette died, crushed by a tree he was felling near Farnham.^[13] His mother Clothilde, left alone with the children still dependent on her, settled in Saint-Césaire; worn out by tuberculosis, she in turn died on 20 November 1857, just after Alfred turned twelve.^[14] Now a complete orphan, the boy was taken in by his maternal aunt, Marie-Rosalie Foisy, and her husband Timothée Nadeau, in Saint-Césaire, where he lived from about 1857 to 1860.^[15][16]

This early double loss — and the extreme poverty that came with it — left a lasting mark on young Alfred. His biographers report that, even as a child, he practised forms of voluntary mortification disproportionate to his age: he went without dessert and wore, against his bare waist, a leather belt studded with iron spikes.^[17] His times of prayer on his knees were already long, frequent and intense — the sign of an early interior life that nothing in his immediate surroundings would have suggested.^[18]

The mills of New England (1863-1867)

Like tens of thousands of French Canadians of his generation, faced with the farming crisis and the poverty of the Lower-Canadian countryside, Alfred emigrated to the United States to find work. Before leaving, he had already tried several manual trades: labourer carrying building materials, apprentice baker and apprentice shoemaker in Saint-Césaire around 1862, then various jobs in Farnham, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Waterloo and Chambly — never settling anywhere, his poor health making heavy labour difficult.^[19]

In October 1863, he left for New England, where he worked for nearly four years in the cotton mills: in Connecticut, at Moosup, Putnam, Hartford and Killingly; in Massachusetts, at North Easton; in Rhode Island, at Phenix.^[20][21] There he learned English despite his limited schooling, and shared the lot of the French-Canadian immigrant workers of the time, whose parishes and Petits Canadas dotted industrial New England. This period of wandering as a labourer, rarely dwelt on by pious hagiographies, nevertheless sheds light on a constant trait of his spiritual character: a closeness born of experience, not theory, with the poor, uprooted workers whom he would later meet in great numbers at the door of the Montreal college.^[22]

Alfred returned to Canada in 1867 and settled for a time in Sutton, where he worked notably as a handyman at the presbytery of Father Édouard Springer in Farnham.^[23]

Father Provençal: "I am sending you a saint"

It was in these years back home that Alfred met the man who would decisively shape his life: Father André Provençal, parish priest of Saint-Césaire, who became his spiritual director around 1868.^[24][25] Struck by the uncommon piety of this young man without education or means, Father Provençal recommended him to the Congregation of Holy Cross, which ran the Collège Notre-Dame in Côte-des-Neiges, on the outskirts of Montreal. According to the tradition reported by his biographers, Father Provençal wrote to the novice master a letter in which he claimed to be sending the congregation "a saint"^[26] — a judgement which, coming from a country priest about a nearly illiterate labourer, would take on a singular resonance more than a century later.

Alfred presented himself at the Collège Notre-Dame on 22 November 1870. By a quirk of the calendar, his arrival coincided with a major liturgical event: a few days later, on 8 December 1870, Blessed Pope Pius IX proclaimed Saint Joseph patron of the universal Church^[27] — a providence that the future Brother André, wholly devoted to that same Saint Joseph, would not fail to ponder.

A difficult entry into religious life

Alfred Bessette's admission into the Congregation of Holy Cross was far from straightforward. His fragile health and his almost total lack of schooling made the religious authorities hesitate to keep him as a postulant.^[28][29] It was the Bishop of Montreal, Bishop Ignace Bourget, a leading figure of 19th-century Quebec Catholicism, who personally intervened to reassure the congregation of the candidate's spiritual worth.^[30] The new novice master, Brother Amédée Guy, then settled the matter with a phrase that has remained famous in the historiography of Holy Cross: "If this young man becomes unable to work, he will at least know how to pray well"^[31][32] — a prophetic judgement if ever there was one.

Alfred took the religious habit on 27 December 1870, together with another postulant.^[33] Following the custom of religious life, he chose a new name: he took the name of André, in homage to Father Provençal who had guided him towards Holy Cross.^[34][35] His novitiate, delayed by the initial doubts about his constitution, ultimately lasted three years — longer than average. He pronounced his temporary vows on 22 August 1872, at the age of twenty-seven, then his perpetual vows on 2 February 1874, at twenty-eight, as a lay brother — that is, a non-cleric religious devoted to the manual and material tasks of the community, as opposed to the teaching fathers and brothers.^[36]

Thirty-nine years at the door

Upon entering, the congregation entrusted Brother André with the role of doorkeeper at the Collège Notre-Dame — a role he would fulfil with remarkable constancy until mid-July 1909, nearly thirty-nine years.^[37][38] The post, seemingly humble, was in reality varied and demanding: welcoming visitors at the college entrance, keeping the premises clean, running errands and commissions, distributing alms, acting as barber for the pupils, nursing sick schoolboys as an infirmarian, handling mail and parcels — not to mention, as he himself joked, "looking after the horse, the garden and the heavy physical work".^[39]

It was in the patient, repetitive performance of this duty that an uninterrupted life of prayer quietly took root. Brother André prayed inwardly while carrying out his manual tasks, and devoted a good part of his nights to commending to God the sufferings he had heard about during the day.^[40] Asked about these long nightly vigils, he explained that he needed several hours to lay before God all that he had gathered from the sick and afflicted received at the door.^[41]

The oil of the lamp and the statue of Saint Joseph

Very early on, Brother André set up a statue of Saint Joseph in a niche on Mount Royal near the college, before which he led his visitors in prayer.^[42] His characteristic practice, which would become his spiritual signature, was to pray with the sick who came to him, give them a medal of Saint Joseph, and then give them a few drops of the olive oil burning constantly before the saint's statue in the college chapel, advising them to rub themselves with it in confidence.^[43][44]

"It is not I who heal. It is Saint Joseph." — Brother André, his tearful, oft-repeated reply to those who wanted to credit him with the healings^[45]

This constant reply, attested by many witnesses at the canonization process, says everything about Brother André's theology: he never presented himself as a wonder-worker, but as a simple intercessor who systematically gave all the glory for every healing to Saint Joseph, and through him to Christ.

The first documented case dates back to 1877: a confrere, Brother Aldéric, suffering from a leg injury that prevented him from walking normally, reported being healed after invoking Saint Joseph's intercession on Brother André's advice; the fact was reported as early as 1878 in the Annales of the Association of Saint Joseph.^[46] Other cases soon followed, notably that of a feverish pupil, confined to bed by doctor's orders, whom Brother André sent out to play — the child, to everyone's surprise, was perfectly well.^[47]

A reputation as a healer that caused unease

The news spread quickly through the working-class neighbourhood of Côte-des-Neiges: the halt and the sick flocked in growing numbers to the Collège Notre-Dame, to the point that the school's administration grew concerned.^[48] Pupils' parents, confreres and even the college doctor denounced the daily presence of sick people around the school; some, more harshly, called Brother André a charlatan.^[49][50] This institutional opposition, real and documented, must be taken seriously: it shows that Brother André's holiness never imposed itself at once on those around him, but was built amid contradiction, misunderstanding and sometimes contempt before being recognised.

Around 1900, the community asked Brother André to stop receiving the sick inside the college. He withdrew to the tram shelter built opposite the school, where he continued to receive those who came to consult him.^[51] The tram company, at first reluctant, ended up tolerating the situation given the influx of fare-paying travellers generated by this constant presence — already a sign of the popular scale this informal ministry had taken on.^[52]

The opening of the first chapel (1904)

Convinced that the place where he already led his visitors in prayer deserved a true shrine, Brother André formed the plan of erecting a chapel in honour of Saint Joseph on the flank of Mount Royal. The college administration and the Archbishop of Montreal, Archbishop Paul Bruchési, gave their approval, on the express condition that the building costs be covered entirely by donations received — the congregation committing none of its own funds to the venture.^[53] The land was acquired thanks to the spontaneous gifts of the faithful, in money as in kind: statues, sacred vessels, liturgical vestments, even a bell.^[54]

The very first offering, according to the tradition reported by the shrine itself, was but a single penny — yet it inaugurated a manner of funding that would remain the Oratory's hallmark until its completion: a work built not by the fortune of a patron, but by the accumulation of modest gifts from a people of pilgrims.^[55]

The small chapel was opened on 16 October 1904. Brother André was then fifty-nine years old; after decades of obscurity, this was his first tangible success.^[56] The place was an immediate success, obliging him, between 1908 and 1912, to enlarge it four times in succession to cope with the growing influx of pilgrims.^[57]

The Association and the Annales of Saint Joseph

The organisation of the fledgling shrine quickly took shape. A committee was formed on 9 September 1908, and the Confraternity of Saint Joseph was officially erected on 21 November 1909 by Archbishop Paul Bruchési.^[58] An Oratory council came into being in 1912, made up of three priests and three brothers. From 1910 onwards, Brother André, overwhelmed by a daily mail of two to three hundred letters, was given a secretary to help answer it.^[59]

In 1912 appeared the first issue of the Annales de Saint-Joseph, a monthly magazine spreading accounts of favours obtained, prayers and news of the shrine: its print run grew from 3,600 copies in 1912 to 122,000 copies in 1932, with an English edition launched in 1927.^[60] This massive circulation, in a still largely rural Quebec without major media outlets, partly explains the extraordinary popular fame Brother André acquired in his lifetime, well beyond Montreal.

From 1915 onwards, his superiors granted him two periods of rest each year, which he used to visit family and friends in Sutton, Saint-Césaire and Quebec, but also to travel to New England and Ontario — to Toronto, Sudbury and Ottawa.^[61] These journeys each became events: stationmasters announced his arrival, crowds thronged as he stepped off the train, and local newspapers reported new healings attributed to his passing through.^[62]

Towards the basilica

Under the pressure of growing pilgrim numbers, and with the encouragement of Archbishop Bruchési, a basilica project was launched in 1913, entrusted to the architects Alphonse Venne and Dalbé Viau.^[63] A crypt, able to seat about a thousand people, was opened on 16 December 1917.^[64][65] The building of the basilica proper, raised above this crypt, began in 1924; Brother André's modest original chapel was preserved on the site, incorporated into the new buildings like a silent heart amid the surrounding architectural grandeur.

The funding of what would become one of the largest churches in the world rested entirely on donations from Brother André's admirers: pious associations, trade unions, religious congregations, groups of chronically ill and disabled people took up the habit of organising collective pilgrimages there.^[66] By the end of 1936, the building was ready to receive its dome — inspired by that of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, but more elongated and less spherical — though it had not yet been built when Brother André died; all the exterior work on the basilica would only be completed in 1967, thirty years after his death.^[67]

The final months and death (1937)

At the end of 1936, despite his great age, Brother André travelled to New York to solicit a donation from the billionaire John D. Rockefeller for the completion of the Oratory; he already sensed, according to those close to him, that his end was near.^[68] On 28 December 1936, his state of health required him to be taken to the Hôpital Notre-Dame-de-l'Espérance in Ville Saint-Laurent, in the Montreal suburbs.

He died on 6 January 1937, at 0:55 a.m., at the age of ninety-one.^[69][70] For an entire week, despite the bitter cold of the Quebec winter, nearly a million faithful filed day and night past his remains lying in state^[71] — a considerable figure for the time, requiring special transport from the United States and mobilising more than five hundred firefighters and five hundred police officers to keep order.^[72] The North American press devoted more than eight hundred and sixty articles to the event.^[73] A cast was taken of his face to preserve its imprint, and his heart was removed to be kept separately, following a custom reserved for religious figures deemed exceptional.^[74] In keeping with the spirit of poverty that had marked his whole life, his body was laid in a simple wooden coffin.^[75] He rests today in a tomb of black marble within the basilica of Saint Joseph's Oratory itself.

A theology of the heart and of trust

Brother André's spirituality rests on three pillars, constant in the testimonies gathered about him: unceasing prayer, compassionate listening to the sick and afflicted, and a faith of the heart rather than theological speculation.^[76] He himself summed up the demands of this faith in a stark formula:

"If you have no faith, you will obtain nothing." — Brother André^[77]

Those close to him said of him that "he was either speaking to others about the good Lord, or speaking to the good Lord about others"^[78] — a backhanded definition of a life wholly absorbed in mediating between God and men, with nothing left over for anything else. He tirelessly invited the afflicted to trustful abandonment:

"Place yourselves in the good Lord's hands; he abandons no one in adversity." — Brother André^[79]

Suffering transformed

Far from any glib theology of miraculous healing at all costs, Brother André professed an authentic theology of suffering offered up. He did not systematically urge people to ask for physical healing, but to accept God's will first, whatever it might be.

The accounts of his spirituality convey its meaning: not to seek first to obtain healing, but to accept God's will and ask him for the strength to bear the trial.^[80]

This same conviction is found, this time in the words of Pope Benedict XVI himself, in the canonization homily of 17 October 2010: Benedict XVI quotes Brother André inviting the sick "not to seek to have their trials taken away, but rather to ask for the grace of bearing them well"^[81] — a magisterial summing-up of a spirituality the new saint had lived before preaching it.

This theology of self-giving reaches, by an entirely popular path and without learned theological training, the deepest intuition of the Christian spirituality of redemptive suffering — the one Saint Paul expresses when he writes that he is "completing in his flesh what is lacking in Christ's sufferings, for his body which is the Church" (Col 1:24).

A devotion to the Holy Family

While his most visible devotion was to Saint Joseph, Brother André recommended to pilgrims a broader piety embracing the whole Holy Family — Jesus, Mary and Joseph — which he deemed inseparable.^[82] He prayed the rosary daily and held a particular love for the Way of the Cross, into which, it was said, he poured the sufferings of the sick people he had taken to heart.^[83] His Eucharistic devotion was just as simple and direct:

"You eat three times a day to sustain your body; then go to Communion above all to sustain your soul." — Brother André^[84]

"If people knew better how to pray, they would obtain everything from Saint Joseph." — Brother André^[85]

This constant insistence on Saint Joseph as a privileged way of access to God — "pray to Saint Joseph and he will always be your father and your guide"^[86] — makes Brother André one of the great architects, in the 20th century, of Josephite devotion in the Catholic world, alongside figures such as Saint Joseph Cafasso and the Carmelite tradition inherited from Saint Teresa of Avila.

The opening of the cause (1940-1960)

As early as 1940, barely three years after Brother André's death, the Archbishop of Montreal, Archbishop Joseph Charbonneau, established on 13 November 1940 an ecclesiastical tribunal to study his writings.^[87] On 8 October 1941, under the chairmanship of Canon Adélard Arbour, the diocesan informative process on the virtues opened, scrutinising the candidate's life and virtues for eight years.^[88] In April 1958, the acts of this process were presented to the Roman cardinals; on 8 November 1960, Pope Saint John XXIII officially introduced the cause before the court of Rome.^[89] Two further inquiries, stretching over more than two decades, then followed this first examination.

A singular episode marks this period: on 11 September 1963, as part of the canonical procedure, Brother André's tomb was opened to verify the integrity of his body — a traditional practice in canonization causes. The body was found mummified and intact.^[90]

Venerable (1978) and blessed (1982)

On 12 June 1978, Pope Paul VI declared Alfred Bessette venerable, thus recognising the heroicity of his virtues.^[91] It remained to establish a miracle obtained through his intercession to allow beatification.

The Audino miracle

The miracle accepted for the beatification concerns Joseph Carlo Audino, an American from Rochester (New York State), struck in 1958 with widespread liver cancer.^[92][93] Placing great trust in Brother André, Mr Audino redoubled his prayers after his diagnosis was announced; a few days later, his doctor observed a complete and unexplained healing.^[94] Rome submitted the file to nine expert physicians, in a 966-page report containing 150 X-rays; unanimously, these experts concluded that medicine alone could not explain this healing.^[95] On the basis of this miracle, Brother André was beatified on 23 May 1982 by Pope Saint John Paul II.^[96][97]

Between the beatification and the canonization, considerable popular mobilisation accompanied the cause: over the years, some ten million people signed petitions asking for the canonization of Blessed Brother André.^[98]

The second miracle and the canonization (2010)

The miracle accepted for the canonization concerns a Canadian child who, in 1999, the victim of a serious accident (struck while riding his bicycle), suffered two skull fractures and a major cerebral haemorrhage.^[99][100] Plunged into a three-week post-traumatic coma, with brain-stem involvement, the child was then in a condition deemed terminal by the doctors, who anticipated an imminent fatal outcome.^[101] According to the testimony gathered by the shrine, it was at the very moment a family member implored the child's healing through Brother André's intercession at Saint Joseph's Oratory that he came out of the coma; he then recovered completely, with no after-effects.^[102]

The medical file, submitted to a commission of doctors and specialists mandated by the Vatican, gave rise to an eight-hundred-page report.^[103][104] The medical commission unanimously concluded a scientifically inexplicable healing; the case was officially recognised as miraculous by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in October 2009, and Pope Benedict XVI authorised the promulgation of the decree on 19 December 2009.^[105] On 19 February 2010, at a consistory, Benedict XVI announced that Brother André would be canonized on 17 October 2010.^[106]

The ceremony took place on 17 October 2010 in Saint Peter's Square, before some 50,000 pilgrims, including more than three thousand Quebecers who had come specially for the occasion; five other blesseds were canonized the same day — Stanisław Kazimierczyk, Giulia Salzano, Candida Maria de Jesús Cipitria y Barriola, Mary MacKillop and Battista Camilla Varano.^[107][108] In his homily, Pope Benedict XVI traced in a few dense sentences the new saint's spiritual path:

"Brother André Bessette, a native of Quebec, Canada, and a religious of the Congregation of Holy Cross, knew suffering and poverty very early in life. They led him to turn to God in prayer and in an intense interior life. Doorkeeper at the Notre Dame College in Montreal, he showed boundless charity and did everything to relieve the distress of those who came to confide in him. Barely educated, he nevertheless understood where the essential of his faith was to be found. For him, believing meant submitting freely and out of love to the divine will. Entirely inhabited by the mystery of Jesus, he lived the beatitude of pure hearts, that of personal rectitude. It is thanks to this simplicity that he enabled many to see God. He had Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal built, of which he remained the faithful guardian until his death in 1937. There he witnessed innumerable healings and conversions." — Benedict XVI, canonization homily, Saint Peter's Square, 17 October 2010^[109]

Two weeks later, on 30 October 2010, a Mass of thanksgiving gathered nearly 50,000 people at Montreal's Olympic Stadium, in the presence of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Quebec Premier Jean Charest, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay and some sixty bishops from Canada, the United States, Haiti and as far as Bangladesh, presided over by Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte.^[110] His liturgical feast is set on 7 January, the day after the anniversary of his death (the United States liturgical calendar keeps it on 6 January).^[111]

The theft and return of the heart (1973-1974)

Brother André's heart, kept separately in the basilica since 1937, was stolen in March 1973, in circumstances that shocked Quebec public opinion — the long-unexplained theft of a relic as unusual as it was venerated. It was finally recovered in December 1974 and restored to the Oratory.^[112] Singular as it was, this episode never dented popular fervour for the shrine: on the contrary, it helped underline, in Quebec's collective memory, how much Brother André's relic remained a living object of veneration more than a third of a century after his death.

Patron of family caregivers (2016)

In September 2016, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) proclaimed Saint André Bessette patron of family caregivers in Canada, in view of his constant bond, throughout his religious life, with the sick and those who cared for them.^[113] This recognition followed a petition carried since 2010 by the Regroupement des aidants naturels du comté de L'Assomption (RANCA), whose coordinator Caroline Vadeboncoeur had requested this patronage through Father Mario Lachapelle, C.S.C.^[114] This recent patronage illustrates how Brother André's cult can meet contemporary pastoral needs — accompanying the sick and their caregivers — without ever leaving the spiritual soil that gave it birth: concrete, daily attention to the weakest.

A saint for the contemporary Church

Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal, born of a single penny and the tenacity of an uneducated lay brother, is today one of the largest basilicas in the world and the most visited shrine in Canada, welcoming more than two million visitors and pilgrims each year.^[115] Brother André's journey — from the Saint-Césaire orphanage to the mills of New England, from the wicket of the Collège Notre-Dame to Saint Peter's Square in Rome — offers a striking counterpoint to worldly ideas of success: it was precisely in embraced weakness, humble obedience and constancy in prayer that one of the vastest Catholic works of 20th-century North America was built, day after day.

His canonization by Benedict XVI in 2010 confirms, for the universal Church, what generations of Quebec and North American pilgrims had already recognised in his lifetime: holiness is measured neither by education, nor by health, nor by social rank, but by silent, trusting fidelity to God's will, day after day, at the door of a college.

• Saint Joseph, spouse of the Virgin Mary and patron of the universal Church, of whom Brother André was one of the greatest apostles of the 20th century.
• Saint John XXIII (1881-1963), the pope who introduced Brother André's canonization cause before the court of Rome in 1960.
• Saint John Paul II (1920-2005), the pope who beatified Brother André in 1982.
• Saint Joseph Cafasso (1811-1860), another great figure of devotion and care for the poor and sick in the 19th century.