Saint Joseph's Oratory

Crutches and canes hang between the pillars of the Votive Chapel, an Art Deco gallery built against the rock of Mount Royal, where 10,000 lamps and votive candles burn in front of a white marble Saint Joseph. The Oratory says the crutches were left by pilgrims healed of their ailments in the time of Brother André.

Brother André

Brother André was born Alfred Bessette and spent about 40 years as the porter of Collège Notre-Dame, a boys' school at the foot of the mountain. People came to him sick, and he told them to pray to Saint Joseph. He took oil from a lamp burning in front of a statue of the saint and told them to rub it on the part of the body that was suffering. In 1904, his congregation let him build a small chapel on land across the street from the college, and the Oratory grew from it. The Oratory calls itself the largest shrine in the world dedicated to Saint Joseph. Brother André died on January 6, 1937, at 91, and Pope Benedict XVI declared him a saint on October 17, 2010.

The oil is still there. A flame burns day and night in a basin of vegetable oil in front of a statue of Saint Joseph, and the oil is bottled and sold in the Oratory shop. The Oratory describes it as an act of faith, and says it "is not a remedy, much less a magical rite."

The heart

After Brother André died, his heart was removed and kept at the Oratory in an urn of formalin. On the night of March 15, 1973, it was taken, and the Holy Cross fathers who run the Oratory found it missing the next day. Time magazine reported in 1973 that the thieves picked three locks to open a steel door and an iron grille, then chiseled the urn off its marble pedestal without alerting the guards. The Radio-Canada archive says no sign of forced entry was found and that the thieves appear to have had the keys. The crime reporter Claude Poirier has said the same.

Accounts of a ransom differ too. Radio-Canada reports that the thieves asked for 50,000 Canadian dollars and that the Oratory refused, on the grounds that a relic has no monetary value under Church law. Time wrote that the ransom demands sent to a local newspaper apparently came from cranks.

On December 21, 1974, Montréal police returned the heart to the Oratory. According to Radio-Canada, the thieves gave it back through a young lawyer, Frank Shoofey. Poirier says he was put in touch with the thieves, and French-language retellings have him and Shoofey going to an apartment basement in the south of the city, where the heart was found intact. English-language accounts say the thieves contacted Shoofey directly. Nobody was arrested, and why the heart was returned is not known.

The historian Emma Anderson, who has researched the theft, argues that the public outrage showed how Quebecers regarded Brother André during the Quiet Revolution. Many were turning away from the authority of the Church and were still horrified by an attack on a man they saw as a servant of God and of the people of Montréal.

The Oratory now

The heart is in a reliquary at the center of the exhibition on Brother André's life, on level 6. On February 13, 2025, the Oratory opened a welcome pavilion designed by Lemay, part of a project valued at 150 million Canadian dollars that also covers the gardens, the museum space, and the basilica dome. Two of the pavilion's levels are built into the mountain, and cars no longer drive up to the basilica. The Oratory puts its visitors at close to 2 million a year.

Parks Canada counts 283 steps from chemin Queen-Mary to the forecourt of the basilica. To reach the Crypt Church, where Brother André prayed, many pilgrims climb 100 wooden steps on their knees, according to the Oratory. Some guides give the number as 99. In February 2026, La Presse reported that pilgrims still make the climb on their knees.

Entry to the Oratory is free, and the shrine is open every day from 6:30am to 9pm, with the doors closing 10 minutes earlier. The museum keeps shorter hours, 10am to 4:30pm, and its ticket counter closes at 4pm. The information desk is on level 1 of the Marcel Lalonde Reception Pavilion, and elevators run from the entrance to the basilica. The exhibition with the heart is on level 6.

The Oratory asks visitors to cover their shoulders and wear pants and skirts that reach at least mid-thigh. Parking is free for the first 30 minutes and 3.75 Canadian dollars for up to an hour.

The Oratory is an active shrine, and the wooden steps and the Votive Chapel are places where people pray. It's best practice to frame photographs so that people at prayer are not included. The Mass for the Sick is held every Wednesday at 2pm, and the Garden of the Way of the Cross is open from May 1 to Canadian Thanksgiving, the second Monday in October.