Famous for miracles and modesty, Brother André canonized

The province of Québec, although no longer the bastion of Holy Mother Church that it was before the "Quiet Revolution" of the 60s, rejoices today at the canonization of Brother André Bessette, the founder of Montréal’s Oratoire Saint-Joseph du Mont-Royal and a man famous for healings.

Pope Benedict XVI canonized Brother André, the first male saint born on Canadian soil. The Holy Father urged Catholics to follow the example of the simple man who showed endless devotion to the poor and the sick.

The ceremony in Saint Peter's Square took place before 50,000 pilgrims from around the world. 5000 made the trip from Québec and other parts of Canada.

The “Miracle Man of Montréal,” or "the Rocket Richard of Miracles", as he has been called, was already a superstar in his home province. When he died in 1937, aged 91, a million people filed by his coffin at the Oratory, which he had founded in 1904, and where he had worked for decades as a humble doorkeeper and janitor.

Saint-André, as he will now be known, is associated with an extraordinary 125,000 miracles. Two of the healings were investigated thoroughly by the Vatican and were judged to be medically inexplicable -- true miracles.

His first Vatican-confirmed miracle was the healing in 1958 of a Québec man, Giuseppe Carlo Audino, who suffered from cancer. He prayed to Brother André and the cancer disappeared. This miracle was cited in Brother André’s beatification -- the first step on the journey to sainthood -- by Pope John Paul II in 1982.

The identity of the second "miraculee", has never been publicly revealed. Apparently he is a young Québecois, probably 19 or 20 years old, who suffered massive cranial trauma in a road accident as a child in 1999. He was evidently in an irreversible coma, from which doctors said he would never awake.

The boy’s family and friends prayed to Brother André. Against all odds, the boy emerged from his coma. The recovery was judged scientifically inexplicable by several independent doctors. This second miracle qualified Brother André for sainthood.

Dare we hope that Saint-André's canonization will be followed by yet another miracle -- the reawakening of religious fervour in Canada's most Catholic province.

Click here to read "The Rocket Richard of Miracles" by Eric Reguly, from the Globe and Mail.