The eighth of twelve children, sickness and weakness troubled André from birth. When he was 12, both his parents died, and he took work as a farmhand. He tried many trades - shoemaker, baker, blacksmith, factory worker - but his sickness made holding any trade difficult.
At 25, André applied for entrance into the Congregation of Holy Cross. After a year’s novitiate, he was refused due to his weak health. But with the help and the support of Bishop Bourget, he was finally accepted. He was sent to Notre Dame College in Montreal, where his responsibilities were to answer the door, welcome guests, find the people they were visiting, wake up those in the school, and deliver mail. Brother Andre joked later, "At the end of my novitiate, my superiors showed me the door, and I stayed there for forty years."
In 1904, he surprised the Archbishop of Montreal by requesting permission to build a chapel to Saint Joseph on the mountain near the college. The Archbishop refused to go into debt and would only give permission for Brother Andre to build what he had money for. All the money Brother Andre had was a few hundred dollars in a small dish he had kept near a statue of St. Joseph with a sign "Donations for St. Joseph."
Not to be detered, Andre took his few hundred dollars and built a small wood shelter only fifteen feet by eighteen feet. He kept collecting money and went back three years later to request a larger building. The suspicious Archbishop asked if he was having visions of Saint Joseph asking for a shrine, but Brother Andre simply responded, "I have only my great devotion to St. Joseph to guide me." After the Archbishop granted him permission to continue, he started by adding a roof so that all the people who were coming to hear Mass at the shrine wouldn't have to stand out in the rain and the wind. Then came walls, heating, a paved road up the mountain, a shelter for pilgrims, and finally a place where Brother Andre and others could live and take care of the shrine and the pilgrims who came to visit.
By 1937, the chapel was still not completed, so a frail 92-year-old Brother Andre told his workers to place a statue of Saint Joseph in the unfinished, unroofed basilica saying, “Put a statue of Saint Joseph in the middle. If he wants a roof over his head, he’ll get it.” He was so ill he had to be carried up the mountain to see the statue in its new home. Brother Andre died soon after on January 6.
 
This print is part of the "Happy Saint" collection by Anna Morelli.
 
The image is professionally printed, hand-signed by the artist, and comes enclosed in a plastic sleeve to ensure protection.