Saint Januarius and Saint Andre Bessette

From an address to the Conference of Catholic Women at Ascension Church, Boca Raton, FL on January 16, 2024

Madame President, Honored Guests, Council Sisters:

We don’t know much about Saint Januarius – although that’s not surprising, since he died in 305, during the Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians. According to FranciscanMedia.org, “Legend has it that Januarius and his companions were thrown to the bears in the amphitheater of Pozzuoli, but the animals failed to attack them. They were then beheaded, and Januarius’ blood ultimately brought to Naples.”

His blood is why he is in the news, usually three times a year, because of a recurring miracle. Since at least 1389, the first year for which records are known to have been kept, the relic of his blood, held in the Cathedral of Naples liquifies in recognition of three anniversaries each year: the Saturday before the first Sunday of May; his feast day of September 19; and the anniversary if the December 16, 1631 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, when the people were spared by his intervention. (There have been times when it has failed to liquify, but local church authorities held that there is no symbolism in its failure, even though such failures have happened around major events, including the outbreak of World War II in Italy; the start of the Nazi Occupation of Italy; and the start of a cholera epidemic in Naples.

Saint Januarius is the patron saint of blood banks and blood donors. He is also one of the patron saints of Naples, where he is best known by the Italian version of his name, San Gennaro.

His blood is kept in a reliquary, shown above.

Miracles like this are not common, but they are also not limited to long-ago Saints. There’s a 20th century saint whose heart is displayed in reliquary in Montreal, although, contrary to what my sister told very impressionable eight-year-old me, that heart is not still beating.

Saint André of Montreal’s journey to sainthood spans three centuries: he was born in the nineteenth century, died in the twentieth century, and was canonized in the twenty-first century.

Born in what was then Canada East of the Province of Canada (now Quebec), he was an orphan by the age of twelve. He was poorly educated. Some reports say he attended school briefly, after becoming orphaned, but never progressed beyond writing his own name. Yet, despite his lack of formal education and frail health, his personal faith and piety led to his admittance to the Congregation of the Holy Cross as a lay brother, where he performed such tasks as porter, sacristan, laundry worker and messenger.

He also visited – or was visited by – the sick, whom he rubbed with oil and prayed for to St. Joseph, to whom he had a particular devotion. Those he so treated recovered, and he became well known, especially among Catholic French-Canadians. During his lifetime, he was credited with thousands of healings – and he gave all credit for these miracles to St. Joseph working through him.

His own prayers and actions are also credited in the Congregation’s obtaining the land for and building Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal, an undertaking that took over fifty years. It is there that he was buried after his death at the age of ninety-one, on January 6, 1937, and there that the relic of his heart is displayed.

St. Andre Bessette was declared venerable in 1978; was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982, and canonized on October 17, 2010.