Saint André Bessette

He was born Alfred Bessette on August 9, 1845, the eighth of twelve children of a French Canadian couple near Montreal. ¹⁴ Sickness and weakness, Franciscan Media says, dogged him from birth. ⁴ Both his parents were dead by the time he was twelve, and he was taken in by another family. ³⁴

What followed was a string of short jobs. Franciscan Media lists farmhand, shoemaker, baker and blacksmith, "all failures," and then factory work in the United States during the boom years of the Civil War. ⁴ Vatican News calls him an itinerant worker, in Quebec and in American factories, whose health would not let him work as much as an ordinary laborer. ³ Benedict XVI put it in one sentence at the canonization: he "experienced suffering and poverty at a very early age," and they led him "to have recourse to God through prayer and an intense inner life." ¹

At 25 he asked to enter the Congregation of Holy Cross. ³⁴ Vatican News sets out why the superior in Montreal doubted him: the young man was desperately poor, in poor health, and unable to read, and this was an order of teaching brothers. ³ He did have a note from his pastor, which Vatican News quotes: "I am sending you a saint…." ³

The two accounts of what happened next differ. Vatican News says the superior at first turned him away, and the bishop of Montreal intervened. ³ Franciscan Media says he was admitted to the novitiate, refused at the end of the year because of his weak health, and then received after an extension and the urging of Bishop Bourget. ⁴ Either way he stayed, and took the name Brother André. ³

Nobody could think of much for him to do. He was made doorkeeper of the community's college, Notre Dame College in Montreal, and Franciscan Media adds the duties of sacristan, laundry worker and messenger. ¹⁴ He joked about it later. In Vatican News's wording: "At the end of my novitiate, my superiors showed me the door, and there I stayed for forty years." ³

His devotion to Saint Joseph went back to childhood. ⁴ Franciscan Media describes the small statue of Joseph on the windowsill of his room by the door, facing Mount Royal, and his prediction: "Some day, Saint Joseph is going to be honored in a very special way on Mount Royal!" ⁴ He spent much of the night on his knees in that room. ⁴

Vatican News explains how it began: people who passed his door day after day came to know him, sensed that he prayed more than most, and started telling him their troubles. ³ He prayed with the sick and commended them to Saint Joseph. ³ Franciscan Media says he visited people who were ill and rubbed them lightly with oil from a lamp burning in the college chapel, and that when an epidemic broke out at a nearby college he volunteered to nurse and not one person died. ⁴

Word spread that the porter could heal. ³⁴ Some of his own brothers called him a fraud and a danger to the order, according to Vatican News; Franciscan Media says his superiors were uneasy, diocesan authorities suspicious, and doctors called him a quack. ³⁴ His answer did not change. "I do not cure," he said again and again. "Saint Joseph cures." ⁴ So many people came that his superiors had him receive visitors at the nearby trolley station, and eventually some 80,000 letters a year arrived for him; Franciscan Media says he needed four secretaries to answer them. ³⁴

His message to everyone was the same, in Vatican News's telling: "Go to Joseph. He will help you. Come, we'll pray together." ³ Benedict XVI kept the emphasis where André put it. He called him "the witness of innumerable cures and conversions" and quoted his advice: "Do not seek to have your trials removed," he said, "ask rather for the grace to bear them well." ¹

For years the Holy Cross authorities had tried to buy land on Mount Royal. Franciscan Media says Brother André and others climbed the hill and planted medals of Saint Joseph, and the owners suddenly gave way. ⁴ In 1904, according to Vatican News, he asked the Archbishop of Montreal for permission to build a small chapel to Saint Joseph across the street from the school, and was told he could build only what he had money for. ³

He had none, so he cut hair at five cents a head; Vatican News says that after a few years it paid for what was essentially a small roofless hut. ³ Franciscan Media puts the sum he collected at $200. ⁴ He received visitors there, listening for hours and applying Saint Joseph's oil. Franciscan Media is plain about the outcome: "Some were cured, some not." ⁴ The pile of crutches, canes and braces grew anyway. ⁴

So did the chapel, which acquired walls, a roof and heating, and so many pilgrims that plans were made to replace it with a basilica. ³ Franciscan Media says that by 1931 the new walls were up and the money had run out, and that André said: "Put a statue of Saint Joseph in the middle. If he wants a roof over his head, he'll get it." ⁴ Vatican News tells of him at ninety asking his coworkers to set a statue of Joseph in the unfinished church, and being carried up the hill, old and sick, to see it. ³

Benedict XVI said that André "had built the Oratory of St Joseph of Mount Royal, whose faithful custodian he remained until his death in 1937." ¹ The building itself was finished after he died; Franciscan Media says it took 50 years. ³⁴ Vatican News says it still draws more than two million pilgrims a year. ³

Brother André died on January 6, 1937. ³⁴ Despite the Quebec winter, Vatican News says, one million people filed past his coffin in a week. ³ He is buried at the Oratory. ⁴ He was beatified in 1982, and Pope Benedict XVI canonized him in St. Peter's Square on October 17, 2010, with five others, among them Mary MacKillop of Australia. ¹⁴

In the homily that day Benedict XVI said that André, "with very little education," had nevertheless understood where the essential of his faith lay: "For him, believing meant submitting freely and through love to the divine will." ¹ At the Angelus afterward he greeted the Canadian pilgrims and urged them to follow André's footsteps "to welcome God's will in your life freely and through love." ²

None of the sources consulted for this profile names a patronage for Saint André Bessette, so this page does not claim one. ¹³⁴ The sources present his whole work as devotion to Saint Joseph, to whom he sent everyone who came to his door. ³⁴ The Liturgical Calendar Proper to the Dioceses of Canada lists Saint Joseph as the principal patron of Canada. ⁶ Benedict XVI closed his words on André with a hope rather than a title: "May the example of Bro. André inspire Canadian Christian life!" ¹

In the United States his feast is January 6, the day he died in 1937, and Vatican News and Franciscan Media both list him on that date. ³⁴ The Proper Calendar for the Dioceses of the United States lists "Saint André Bessette, Religious" on January 6 as an optional memorial. ⁵

In Canada he is kept a day later. The Liturgical Calendar Proper to the Dioceses of Canada lists "St. André Bessette, Religious" on January 7 with the rank of memorial, and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops says that "On January 7, the Church in Canada celebrates the life and witness of Saint Brother André Bessette." ⁶⁷

Most of his religious life was spent at a door. The job was given to him because nobody could think of anything else for him to do, and he did it for about forty years. ³⁴ Everything the sources go on to describe, the visits to the sick, the letters, the chapel, grew out of that post and the people it brought him. ³⁴

Franciscan Media records his refusal of the credit as a refrain: "I do not cure," he said again and again. "Saint Joseph cures." ⁴ It does not pretend that everyone who came went home well. Some were cured and some were not. ⁴

His own advice to the sick, which Benedict XVI chose to quote, asked for something other than relief: "Do not seek to have your trials removed," he said, "ask rather for the grace to bear them well." ¹ He had been ill since birth, and the sources do not say that changed. ⁴ The words are hard to hear from inside a trial, and they were spoken by someone who had been in one most of his life.

Benedict XVI said that for André "everything spoke of God and of God's presence," and asked that people might "seek God with simplicity in order to discover him ever present in the heart of our life." ¹ Franciscan Media's reflection takes up the obvious objection to the oil and the medals, the charge of superstition, and answers that they were authentic sacramentals of "a simple, total faith." ⁴