Andre Bissette, the Patron Saint of Viagra

The Catholic Church “teaches” that god calls each one of us to be a saint. Most people treat such invitations as crank calls, but your more impressionable types scurry out to get fitted for a sackcloth hoodie and a bed of nails.

One such loser was André Bessette (1845-1937), whose feast day is celebrated today. A sickly, frail sort as a child, André developed an unhealthy devotion to St. Joseph, perhaps the biggest loser in all of Christendom. Shoot me for asking, but what kind of kid hero worships a broken down, henpecked old git with a hot, teen-age wife that he didn’t even get to “know”: sounds like recorded history’s original house husband.

Small wonder that André failed as a shoemaker, blacksmith, and baker. The only job he could get after finally leeching his way into the Congregation of the Holy Cross was that of doorkeeper at Notre Dame College in Montreal. He later filled out his CV with stints as sanitation engineer, laundry co-ordinator, and messenger.

André amused himself by visiting the sick, whom he often massaged with olive oil in order to ease their suffering. One afternoon as André was ministering to an eighty-year-old man named Jacques, he spilled some olive oil on Jacques’ Little Jacques.

When André began to wipe up the oil, Jacques started to giggle. He was experiencing his first erection in forty years.

Word of this miracle spread after Jacques and his seventy-nine-year-old wife had welcomed their first child into the world. Before long decrepit, old geezers with their hats and themselves in hand were lining up at André’s door.

André’s superiors became uneasy; diocesan authorities were suspicious; doctors called André a quack, even after he had “healed” a man with a painful six-hour erection.

“I do not cure,” he replied. “St. Joseph cures.”    

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