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As of Sunday, six relatives in Orland Park will have a saint in their family.

Richard and Jane Bessette and their daughter Claire, along with Franny and Charlie Durbin and son Andy Durbin, are in Rome to attend the canonization of a distant cousin: "Blessed Brother Andre" Bessette -- better known as the "Miracle Man of Montreal."

In February, Pope Benedict XVI announced Brother Andre was one of six candidates who would become saints. Bessette, who lived from 1845 to 1937, was a French-Canadian member of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Catholic order of brothers and priests.

After joining the congregation, he worked as a doorman at Notre Dame College in Quebec, where the church credited him with miraculous healing of the sick. He went on to found St. Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal in Montreal.

Forty-one years after his death, Bessette was deemed eligible to become a saint, and Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1982.

"I am so excited, and we're honored to have him in our family," Claire Bessette, 15, said before she headed to Rome.

His near-sainthood status has "been a big part of my family since I was little,'' she said. "We're really low key, and we don't make a deal about it to other people. Finally, it's coming, and it's really exciting.''

A cousin of Brother Andre's was Simeon Bessette, Claire's great-great-grandfather. Simeon Bessette immigrated to Chicago's Brighton Park community in 1879 with his wife and 10 children. One of Simeon's sons, Felix, had a son named Lucien, who is Claire's grandfather.

At the ceremony Sunday, Pope Benedict will sign a decree recognizing Brother Andre as a saint. His relatives likely will get seats close to the pope for the ceremony, said Chicago Archdiocese canon lawyer William H. Woestman.

Claire's family will be part of a larger group of 700 people associated with St. Joseph's Oratory who are to attend the canonization.

This isn't the first journey for the Bessette family to honor their cousin. Four years ago, they traveled to St. Joseph's Oratory, where they looked upon the crutches of once-disabled people whom the church says Brother Andre cured. Brother Andre attributed his good works to praying to St. Joseph.

"To know that I'm related to the man that inspired that" is overwhelming, Claire Bessette said. "I'm amazed."

Claire, a sophomore at Marian Catholic, will spend a week with her family in Rome. She was given a simple theology assignment for the week of classes she is missing from school: Keep a journal. That's a homework assignment she will happily complete, she said.

Brother Andre is an inspiration to Catholics everywhere, Woestman said.

"We all have heroes," Woestman said. ". . . He has a popular devotion from the ordinary people. He was a simple, ordinary man with prayer."