June 23, 2021

By Mary Beth Bracy
North Country Catholic

During this Year of St. Joseph, it is hard not to recall the intercession of St. Brother André Bessette, whose inspiration and tireless labor were instrumental in the building of St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montréal.

Born August 9, 1845, St. André died on January 6, 1937, at the age of 91 and his funeral was attended by over a million people. St. André visited our diocese numerous times, touched the lives of countless North Country residents and still has relatives here.

Father Normand C. Cote of Holy Cross Parish, Plattsburgh explained that St. André was faithful to the humble task of doorkeeper, and God was able to work miracles through him for souls.

Mary Clark is St. André fourth cousin three times removed. In 2011, her family donated a table at which Brother André prayed to St. John’s Church in Plattsburgh. It is now located to the right of the sanctuary, underneath the statue of Brother André, near the St. Joseph statue.

“My mother (whose maiden name was Bessette) and her family would sit at that table and pray with him when he came to Malone to visit,” Clark said. “He held a very special place in their hearts. Our family still prays to Saint Brother André.”

Clark said the family feels very blessed he is now a Saint.

“There was always a candle in the drawer (of the table) to use when he came for prayer. When we were in Rome for the canonization, I bought a candle with Saint André on it, and placed it in the drawer,” said Clark.

St. André is often remembered for bringing hope to the sick through the intercession of St. Joseph. Stephen Hebert of Plattsburgh, a Montréal native, developed Meningitis C in February 1991. Ten people contracted it and, at the age of 24, he was the only survivor.

“This bacteria plunged me into a 10-day coma and created a bunch of complications; every single one of them could be deadly,” Hebert said. “To give you a general idea of the state I was in, I had five cardiac arrests, kidney failure, an odeama to the brain and one to a lung, and my blood pressure was so low, I was losing circulation to my right foot.”

Regarding his Near-death experience, Hebert says that he could write a book.

“For some strange reason, there was a chain of prayer done for me throughout the province of Quebec,” he said. “I believe I was saved because of the 15 promises of the Rosary, which I practiced since I was a teenager. But, I only realized that later in life, living for a long time with survivor’s guilt.”

Other heavenly friends interceded for him as well.

“Since I was living on the south shore of Montréal, I had easy access to the St. Joseph’s Oratory,” Hebert said. “I always loved and still love that place. The walls of a section of one of the entrances are decorated with the crutches and canes of people who were miraculously healed by Brother André. Brother André wasn’t canonized back then, but he was still a legend in Quebec.

“After the coma, pretty much all my organs got back to normal, and I was regaining strength. But, my right foot from the heel to the toes turned black like charcoal from necrosis. The doctors’ prognosis wasn’t good. They would have to amputate half of my foot. I was pretty discouraged, and I thought that I would do a trip to the Oratory before the operation. I had nothing to lose.”

Hebert didn’t tell anyone about his plan.

“I think St. Joseph heard me because a couple of days later my uncle, who was a priest, came to visit me at the intensive care with a piece of cloth that belonged to Brother André and some St. Joseph’s oil. He knew an old priest at the Oratory and told him about me, so that’s how my uncle got the cloth. He wrapped my foot in the cloth with St Joseph’s oil, to the great despair of doctors, and told me to be patient. After about a week, the necrosis was gone except for the tip of the toes. I had those amputated, but just the last articulation of each toe (all five). It was much better than losing a foot. I was able to do any sport and climb anything, so this is truly one of the many miracles I had and also the fact of getting the piece of cloth, that relic without telling anyone.”

St. André’s intercession for Hebert didn’t end there.

“Later in life, I met my soulmate and got married,” he said. “She’s an American. I moved to Upstate New York where we got married at St. Peter’s Church in Plattsburgh. Guess what? In that church there is a chapel dedicated to Brother André with his picture on the front entrance. I could never have foreseen this coming . . . God acts in mysterious ways.”

‘If it wasn’t for Brother André, I wouldn’t be alive’

When Father Joseph W. Giroux first arrived in Malone, some parishioners were going to St. André’s canonization in Rome. Someone had to back out at the last minute, and they offered Father Giroux the ticket.

“This was long before we had thought of merging the parishes or certainly of naming them after him,” Father Giroux said. “When I returned, I was visiting with my grandparents in Plattsburgh and my grandfather (Leo Giroux) told me a story that I couldn’t believe I had never heard before about his mother (Corine Guay Giroux). After she’d had her first child, she had some difficulty with her legs and was no longer able to walk.”

It was thought that her first child was going to be her only child.

“Brother André prayed with her, and she was cured,” Father Giroux said.

She went on to have Father Giroux’s grandfather and a number of other children. Father Giroux realized that “if it wasn’t for Brother André, I wouldn’t be alive.”

The pilgrimage, along with St. André’s visits to Malone, planted the seed in Father Giroux’s mind to name the parishes after him.

“We could document certain days that St. André was in the village of Malone over the years, and we knew for a fact that he’d come to Mass and prayed at Notre Dame Church,” Father Giroux said. “He still has the relatives there. Many people had memories of him. Even more, in Brother André we found things of each of the parishes that were being united. Obviously, there was his devotion to St. Joseph and that was connected to St. Joseph’s, the oldest and original Church in Malone. His work as a doorkeeper was at Notre Dame College in Montréal and he certainly had great devotion to our Blessed Lady, so that was connected to Notre Dame Parish. He had great devoted care to the sick and to the poor and to children, which was a link to St. John Bosco, who did much of the same. And he had a heart for the down trodden.”

There were other connections, as well, Father Giroux explained.

“He belonged to the order of the Holy Cross,” he said.

St. Helen discovered the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, which made a connection to the parish in Chasm Falls.

“So, there was all of those various connections that made Brother André seem like he was the obvious patron around whom we could rally and unite,” Father Giroux said. “I think, in many ways he seemed to accomplish that. To me he was the obvious and, in many ways, only choice. We do well to have these holy patrons. It helps people to rally and helps bring people together, under a new identity, as one.

“We made sure that we would celebrate his feast day. Very graciously, St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montréal presented a relic to the parish on the day that it was founded. We’ve had veneration of his relic on his feast and at other times to incorporate him into the churches. I was always touched to see – there was already a present devotion to St. André, prior to the merger of the Churches – but it grew. To see people praying at his statue, lighting a candle there, it just affirmed for me that we’d done the right thing.”

“When we merged the parishes, we had an evening where a number of people shared their personal stories of St. André because there were a number of his relatives in Malone who used to visit there, some cousins who used to live on Main Street, where unfortunately there is a Gas Station now,” Father Giroux said. “Some of his distant relations are still around and they came. A number of people told stories of meeting him. There was one parishioner, she’d grown up in Montréal, whose father was one of St. André’s chauffeurs. He would drive St. André around for various obligations he had. So, she had some recollections of him from her childhood. Others spoke of his intercession and miraculous things that had happened, healings in particular, in their lives and their families over the years.”

‘I always will have a strong devotion to St. Joseph and Brother André’

“At the age of seven and at the end of October 1935, I caught pneumonia,” shared Father Gilbert B. Menard. “I had a fever of 104. Dr. Gagnier sent me to the then Champlain Valley Hospital in Plattsburgh. In those days, there was no penicillin, so the doctor punched a hole in the side of my back and inserted a tube to drain all the puss from the back of my lungs (maybe also inside, I do not know). I was in the hospital for 31 days. When I was released, Dr. Gagnier mentioned to Dad and Mom that nothing else could be done. If the pneumonia came back, I would not live. Within two weeks, the pneumonia came back. All I know was that I was very sick.”

Father Menard continued “Mother then called Msgr. A. M. Gilbert of St. Ann’s Church, Mooers Forks, mentioned my problem, and what Dr. Gagnier had said. Msgr. Gilbert came with a medal of St. Joseph and a little prayer card of Brother André. Mom mentioned to me that he prayed over me, placed the medal of St. Joseph on my sealed incision which is in the form of a cross. Finally with Mom he recited the prayer of Brother André from the little card. Msgr. Gilbert said to Mom, ‘Be prepared with lots of pieces of cloth, because within two hours the puss on his lungs will all come out.’ Mother mentioned to me later that within two hours, the sealed (healed) incision opened and all of the puss came out.”

“I was weak for two months but at the end of February in 1936, I was strong enough to go back to school,” Father Menard remembered. “I always had, still have, and always will have a strong devotion to St. Joseph and Brother André, now St. André Bessette.”

Father Philip T. Allen, pastor of St. Joseph’s in Olmstedville, St. Mary’s in Indian Lake, and St. Paul’s in Blue Mountain Lake, reechoed his devotion to St. Joseph and St. André.

“When I was a little boy I knew that Brother André came down to St. Catherine’s Church Clintonville and St. Patrick’s in West Peru,” Father Allen said. “Those neighboring parishes had direct contact with Brother André through their pastor Father Francis Cornish. My father went to boarding school at the College of St. Lawrence (high school) in Montréal. Since there wasn’t a Catholic school in Plattsburgh in the early 1900s, his pastor suggested it. He was very interested in Mt. Royal and what Brother André was doing. Father Cornish was pastor first in Clintonville, then West Peru, and later of Immaculate Conception in Keeseville. Brother André came to visit there as an elderly man.”

Most clearly, Father Allen remembers “(Msgr.) Peter Riani’s story about Brother André wanting Father Cornish to have a Holy Hour at his parish at Immaculate Conception every Sunday. Brother André was very strict about it and Father Cornish did it.”

“That was a lasting mark on that parish,” Father Allen said. “He wanted vocations prayed for and they got the vocations, Msgr. Riani and Father Jack Downs, who were ordained in 1955. They, as boys, had gone to that Holy Hour that Brother André had asked for. Father Cornish saw that it was carried it out every Sunday.”

Greatly devoted to the Holy Eucharist, Brother André led weekly Stations of the Cross and a Holy Hour in the small chapel before the Blessed Sacrament. He often spent his nights in prayer before our Eucharistic Lord. Brother André’s bedroom, where he cared for the sick and dying, overlooked the chapel. He cut out a window in his room so that he could look at the tabernacle and pray to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament day and night.

Brother André, was “a holy man, a miracle worker, that we knew about. Montréal didn’t seem that far away,” reflected Father Allen. Brother André was “well-known and well-authenticated, he never took any credit for it himself, people knew that it was because he was promoting devotion to St. Joseph that the miracles happened. Go to Joseph!” He was “a very humble man, a man of such poor health, and lived so long.”

Editor’s note: Additional stories in this series will appear in a future edition of the North Country Catholic.