Alfred Bessette was the eighth of twelve children of a Quebec wheelwright. He was orphaned at twelve and worked as a farmhand, blacksmith, baker, shoemaker, and tinsmith — never holding a job long because of chronic stomach trouble that left him unable to eat solid food for most of his life. He had almost no formal schooling and could barely read or write. In 1870, at twenty-five, he entered the Congregation of Holy Cross at the Collège Notre-Dame in Montreal. The congregation almost refused him because of his health. His pastor wrote: 'I am sending you a saint.'
He was given the name André and assigned the work the community thought least demanding: porter at the college door, a position he held for forty years. He answered the bell, sorted the mail, gave haircuts to students, and quietly began praying for the sick who came asking. Word spread. By 1900 a steady stream of pilgrims was arriving at the college door asking for 'Brother André' — and reporting healings.
He always deflected: 'It is Saint Joseph who heals — I am the little dog of Saint Joseph.' He poured oil from a lamp before the Saint Joseph statue into bottles and gave it to the sick. By 1904 the bishop, embarrassed and concerned, gave him permission to build a small wooden chapel on the slope of Mount Royal opposite the college. That chapel, expanded year by year, grew into the great Saint Joseph's Oratory — the largest church in Canada, crowned by a dome the size of St. Peter's in Rome.
By the time of his death in 1937, witnesses had recorded tens of thousands of healings attributed to his intercession. Brother André himself never claimed any of them. He died at ninety-one at the small hospital next to his chapel. A million people processed past his bier during the week of his funeral, in subzero Montreal weather. Crutches and braces by the thousand, left by the cured, hang today on the walls of the votive chapel of the Oratory.