MORE THAN 50,000 people are expected to gather in the Olympic stadium in Montreal today to celebrate the recent canonization of André Bessette, popularly known as Brother André. Bessette died in 1937 at the age of 91 after a humble and fascinating life. An uneducated man who worked as a doorman for Notre Dame College in nearby Côte de Neiges, he possessed extraordinary gentleness and was believed to have healing powers. He was drawn to the sick and poor and many claimed they had been cured by him. His continuing popularity in modern-day, post-Catholic Montreal is especially remarkable.

Brother André was one of ten children of a lumberman and carpenter. Both his parents were dead by the time he was 12 years old. He supposedly refused to take credit for any cures and denied he could heal the sick.

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