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The 'Miracle Man' of Mount Royal By J. J. de路Lara
N the flat-topped crest of Cote-des-Neiges, which itself stands like a watchful bodyguard of the great Mount Royal, a squatwalled, graystone church looks down UPOIl the long, ",;nding and intricately split streets that form the island c<; Montreal. The church is what is known in the United States as a basement <:hurch-the solid understructure erected by devout and optimistic parishioners who know that with patience and persistent generosity a noble edifice wiII rise upon the nu.c!eus house of God. Ten years ago this, broad crypt had not been made; a simple wooden hut, its rear wall the native rock of Cote-des-Neiges, was all that stood upon the barren face of the hill. Now. the stone crypt is the object of thousands of pilgrims at every season of the year; to it there come by every ~nail stacks of letters from all parts of the Province of Quebec and from many unexpected and 'remote places of the world-and the letters are all addressed to one man. Seventy-six years old, short and spare of stature, with the thin, ill-shaven face and tousled thatch of one who cares naught for personal appearance, but this unpromising aspect of ill-groomedness, with shiny-seamed soutane and too-wide Roman eollar relieved by dancing gray eyes and a strangely childish smile--Frere Andre, known to Canadian vital statistics as' Andre ' Bessette of SaintCesaire, Quebec, is the man who has made the l'rypt of St. Joseph on Cote-des-Neiges. Onlv when he had reached the biblical ,limit of seventy years did Frere Andre commence to achieve the quiet fame that no'w brings tens of thousands of Canadians to see him every year. In 1870 he entered the congregation of the Holy Cross at Montreal. He was a simple lay brother. In all these Catholic religious congregations the vows of poverty, obedience and chastity are taken, and humility is always connoted; but nobody is more humble in station than the lay brethren. They do the manual work. the. less skilled work of the congregations:
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FRERE
ANDRE became porter a.t the seminary of the Holy Cross, which stands at the footof Cotedes-Neiges. For decades he went the round of his 'simple duties, opening and closing doors, attending to callers, polishing and dusting and doing ' all maIlller of hewing' of wood and drawing of water. His superiors saw nothing remarkable in the little Fren('h Canadian brother, excepting, perhaps, that feast days made little difference to Frere Andre's diet and holidays simply meant that the brother from Saint-Cesaire took longer walks and made longer meditations. Some would chide him for the long periods he .spent on his knees. Then, after a time, they observed that he did not frequent the general chapel. Instead, with the aid of another brother-the carpen-
FRERE
ANDRE is the last niizn in the world who would acknowledge the title" Miracle Man'" But i1Ul8much as it describes a man devoted to the .supernatural, not necessarily performing the supernatural, the phrase fits the humble lay brother whose home is high up on breeze-swept Cote-des-Neiges. Knights of ColumbuS, 10,000 strong, made a pilgrimage to the Crypt of St. Joseph, Mount Royal, this year. The picture shows part of this inspiring spectaclea tribute to an humble soul modeling his life alter the Patron Saint of Canada
He found that Frere Andre was a simple, happy lay brother, who did not even lead worshipers in their worship-being a lay brother; but who urged upon all worshipers to pay special homage to St. Joseph who, by the way, is ,the patron saint of Canada. The Archbishop a'Sked the questions that an Archbishop is entitled to ask, for a request had been made for the Archbishop to grant the privilege of the tabernacle (repository of the Host) to the oratory. The Archbishop drove back to his palace, and Frere Andre returned to his altar of St. Joseph to pray for the intercession of the saint in behalf of the innumerable persons who had written to him or come to beg him for aid. But here is what Archbishop Bruchesi himself has pronounced regarding the general ' character of Frere Andre's oratory and crypt: "Shall I say that miracles are wrought in this shrine of St. Joseph'? If I denied that such was the case, the ex-votive offerings in yonder pyramids would belie my words. I need make no investigation, 1 am convinced extraordinary occurrences have taken place; corporal cures, perhaps, although it; is quite easy to suffer illusion in such cases, and spiritual cures still greater have been wrought here. Sinners have come here. have prayed, and after prayer confessed their iniquities and gone away at peace with God."
tel' of the institution-Frere Andre had erected a rude, wooden church-hardly anything better than a night-watchman's hut--on Cote-des-Neiges. There he worshiped, having placed in the hut a little statue of St. Joseph to which had been attributed miraculous powers by the brothers who had received it from the first brothers of the Holy Cross to c.ome to Canada from France. In 1892 Brother AND the Archbishop'S special commission, comAlderic and Pere Geoffrion, the superior of the .tl. prising three priests of other parts of the seminary, had planted a medal of St. Joseph under diocese, declared in its report: " As to the a tall pine beside the spot where Frere Andre's miracles the faithful affirm they. have seen wrought little chapel had been built. before their eyes, the commission withholds passing Minims--or novices of the order-attracted by judgment, before such time as each has been Frere Andre's quietly devout demeanor, visited the thoroughly examined and before the most reliable little crypt. When their parents came to the semcertificates are presented, as, for instance, at ina ry they took them to the, crypt. Gradually, no-, Lourdes." body , knows the exact time--but quite gradually Which shows that the Church does not readily visitors commenced to attribute beneficial incidents accept stories of miracles. i A bishop is decidedly in their lives to their visits to the crypt. The circle of , from Missouri when reports reach him of such visitors enlarged and Frere Andre put rude, benches occurrences in his 路 diocese. The harm that might into his hut. Unexpected cures of minor ailments, be wrought by a spurious miracle worker would then of serious infirmities, were reported by visitors far outweigh the good a genuine miracle ,shrine . to the crypt; sudden acquisition of material goods, may do. and sudden avoidance of impending misfortune were But you will find evidence in the crypt of St. also attributed to the miraculous character of the .Joseph at Cote-des-Neiges. There are trusses and erypt and the little man who tended it. erutches piled there as at Lourdes-not as numerous as at Lourdes-but testifying t o similar miraculou,: HESE reports finally l"eached the ears of Archcures; and the certificates of phYsicians are not bishop Bruchesi of Montreal. His Grace was ' wanting-reputable physicians wh~ in some case;: frankly skeptical--or at least in a frame of mind have no Christian faith to prejudice them in favor where he would not permit an institution claiming of the crypt; and, as a matter of fa ct, the Christian miraculous properties to exist in his diocese without physician's eagerness to indorse miracle shrines is in conducting a rigid examination of its claims. He inverse ratio to his devotion as a Christian. paid a personal visit to Frere Andre and the crypt. Daily at the shrine, crowds will visit it to pay Perhaps the Archbishop feared that some mesmeric honor to St. Joseph and to plead with little Frere power had been exerted on the hundreds of those Andre to intercede for them. This humble brother who had visited the crypt and professed miraculous is the first to laugh at the appellation "Miracle benefits in virtue of their visitation. Man." (Continued on page 26)
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