![]() ![]() At ninety-years old he told his co-workers to place a statue of St. He had started to build a basilica on the mountain but the Depression had interfered. Joseph.ĭespite financial troubles, Brother Andre never lost faith or devotion. But for everything, Brother Andre thanked St. There were even cases of physical healing. Through kindness, caring, and devotion, Brother Andre helped many souls experience healing and renewal on the mountaintop. Then came walls, heating, a paved road up the mountain, a shelter for pilgrims, and finally a place where Brother Andre and others could live and take care of the shrine - and the pilgrims who came - full-time. He started by adding a roof so that all the people who were coming to hear Mass at the shrine wouldn't have to stand out in the rain and the wind. The Archbishop granted him permission to keep building as long as he didn't go into debt. The wary Archbishop asked him, "Are you having visions of Saint Joseph telling you to build a church for him?"īrother Andre reassured him. He kept collecting money and went back three years later to request more building. a small wood shelter only fifteen feet by eighteen feet. ![]() Who would start a chapel now with so little funding?Īndre took his few hundred dollars and built what he could. Joseph." He had collected this change for years but he still had only a few hundred dollars. Nickels and dimes from a small dish he had kept in a picnic shelter on top of the mountain near a statue of St. What money did Brother Andre have? Nickels he had collected as donations for Saint Joseph from haircuts he gave the boys. ![]() The Archbishop refused to go into debt and would only give permission for Brother Andre to build what he had money for. In 1904, he surprised the Archbishop of Montreal if he could, by requesting permission to, build a chapel to Saint Joseph on the mountain near the college. Brother Andre joked later, "At the end of my novitiate, my superiors showed me the door, and I stayed there for forty years." There his responsibilities were to answer the door, to welcome guests, find the people they were visiting, wake up those in the school, and deliver mail. Thank you.Īfter his vows, Brother Andre was sent to Notre Dame College in Montreal (a school for boys age seven to twelve) as a porter. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. ![]() They asked him to leave the order, but Andre, out of desperation again, appealed to a visiting bishop who promised him that Andre would stay and take his vows. The Holy Cross Brothers took him into the novitiate but soon found out what others had learned - as hard as Alfred, now Brother Andre, wanted to work, he simply wasn't strong enough. He may have had no place left to go, but he believed that was because this was the place he felt he should have been all along. It seemed as if Alfred approached the religious order out of desperation, not vocation.Īlfred was desperate, but he was also prayerful and deeply devoted to God and Saint Joseph. The Holy Cross Brothers were teachers and, at 25, Alfred still did not know how to read and write. Chronic stomach pains had made it impossible for Alfred to hold a job very long and since he was a boy he had wandered from shop to shop, farm to farm, in his native Canada and in the United States, staying only until his employers found out how little work he could do. When Alfred Bessette came to the Holy Cross Brothers in 1870, he carried with him a note from his pastor saying, "I am sending you a saint." The Brothers found that difficult to believe. ![]()
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