Five beatified in Rome ceremony

POPE JOHN PAUL beatified two Canadians and three Europeans in St Peter's Square on May 23.
The two Canadians are Holy Cross Brother Andre Bessette, prime mover in the building of St Joseph's Oratory in Montreal, and Sister Marie-Rose Durocher, founder of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. The others scheduled for beatification are Father Peter Donders, a Dutch Redemptorist missionary who cared for lepers in Surinam; Sister Maria Angela Astorch of Spain, a member of the Capuchin Order of St Clare; and Sister Marie Rivier, the French foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary.
Brother Andre, born Alfred Bessette in Saint-Gregoire D'Iberville, Quebec, in 1845, was a French Candian worker and for a time worked as a migrant labourer in New England before entering the Holy Cross Order in 1870. As a religious, Brother Andre lived a simple life and cared for a small chapel he built to St Joseph on a hill in Montreal. He developed a large popular following and many admirers attributed miracles to him during his lifetime. St Joseph's Oratory is one of North America's most popular places of pilgrimage.
Sister Durocher, a native of Montreal, died on October 6, = 1849, her 38th birthday. The congregation founded by her was the first Marian congregation established in Canada.
Father Donders was born in 1809, into a poor family in Tilburg, Netherlands. He was hired as a domestic at the age of 22 in a diocesan minor seminary and the next year was admitted to study for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1841, left for Surinam, on the northeast coast of South America, the following year and remained there until 1887, when he died at the leprosy hospital where he cared for his patients.
Sister Astorch was born in Barcelona in 1592 and was orphaned at a young age. She made her religious profession as member of the Capuchin Order of St Clare in 1609 and five years later helped to found the new Capuchin monastery in Saragozza. In 1626, Sister Astorch was elected abbess of the monastery, until 1645, when she moved to a newly founded monastery in Murcia where she was abbess and mistress of novices for 16 years. She died in 1665.
Sister Rivier, was born at Montpetat Sous BauLon, France, in 1768. Before founding the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary in 1796, she opened 20 schools throughout France in an effort to counteract the spiritual decline caused by the French revolution. She died in 1838, at Bourg-Saint-Andeol, France.