Holy Healer

Before dawn in Montreal one morning last week, hundreds of pious folk began toiling up the icy slopes of Mount Royal to a long, low crypt cut out of the rock of the Cote des Neiges. Many of them brought food, planning to spend the day which was the feast of St. Joseph, foster father of Christ. By nightfall 50,000 pilgrims had crowded into the crypt. They had heard pontifical high mass sung by Montreal's Auxiliary Bishop Alphonse Emmanuel Deschamps, later assisted at benediction of the Blessed Sacrament given by Vicar General Monseigneur Conrad Chaumont. They crossed themselves before a great marble statue of St. Joseph, gazed in awe at the multitude of discarded crutches, braces, trusses which filled the alcoves and niches of the crypt. And of the throng of pilgrims many a halt or ailing one passed on through the crypt to a little office where sat a little old man, known to all as Brother Andre.

In 1870 a poor young man named Alfred Bessette sought entry into the Congregation of the Holy Cross in Montreal. He proved too unlettered to become a priest or teacher. They let him be a novice, called him Frere Andre, made him porter of their college on the Cote des Neiges. Soon the local fathers were perturbed to find that their porter was attracting an increasing throng of visitors. Brother Andre, people believed, was able to obtain the intercession of St. Joseph in healing the ills of the pious.

In 1896, Catholic authorities gave in, allowed Brother Andre to purchase, with funds donated, a plot opposite the college, build a small wooden kiosk. By this time superstitious folk believed a story that Brother Andre had visited the Archbishop of Montreal, convinced him of his supernatural powers by paralyzing the prelate's limbs. Devout Catholics gave more & more money which enabled Brother Andre to build first a small chapel, then a bigger one, finally, with $2,000,000, to begin work on a great Oratory of St. Joseph. This building, which will eventually cost some $6,000,000, is planned as a granite and limestone cruciform basilica, topped by a 95-ft. dome. To its completed crypt go from 5,000 to 10,000 people on ordinary days, 25,000 to 50,000 on feast days. Of the cures registered and checked by physicians before and after every health-seeking visit, none is a "first class" miracle involving growth of new bone tissue. Typical "second class" cures reported from the Oratory are restoration of sight lost from atrophied optic nerves, healing of tuberculosis, cancer, gangrene, paralysis, rheumatism. Now 89, frail, wrinkled Brother Andre is still officially no more than "caretaker" of the shrine. To visitors who seek him out as they did last week he invariably says:

"Anoint yourself with oil and apply the medal of St. Joseph. Make a novena to St. Joseph and persevere in prayers to him."

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