In Montpellier, France toward the close of the 13th Century was born one
Roch, son of the town's wealthy governor. Orphaned, Roch gave away his
fortune, set out for Rome as a mendicant pilgrim. In town after town on
the way, plagues miraculously disappeared upon his advent. But in
Piacenza he fell ill himself, was expelled to a forest where he would
have died save for the devoted ministrations of a dog.
Roch died in his 30s, was identified
by a red cross which, according to tradition, had been on his breast at
birth. Roman Catholics came to believe God had given Roch the power of
healing the plague-stricken, and he was canonized even before the city
of Constance was delivered from cholera in 1414 by prayers for his
intercession. Last week brought the feast of St. Roch and in
Pittsburgh was commemorated what Catholics believe to have been a
miracle as ineffable as any the saint invoked during his life.In the 1840s and 1850s the U. S. was periodically swept by Asiatic
cholera. In 1849, polluted drinking water brought it to Pittsburgh
where in two or three weeks it killed some 5,000 of the city's 45,000
inhabitants. Business activities ceased, citizens barred themselves
indoors, while carts rumbled off with the dead, and hydrants gushed to
rid the town of its foulness. Among the devout who tolled their church
bells and prayed for deliverance were the Catholics of St. Michael's
parish on the South Side, who addressed their supplications to St. Roch
and the Blessed Virgin, vowing that if they were spared they would
devote a day to the two every year forever.* Not a single parishioner
of St. Michael's was stricken then or in the second plague which swept
Pittsburgh in 1853Last week on the South Side, now a congested mill district, for the
88th time solemn high mass was celebrated in St. Michael's for hundreds
of Catholics, some of them sons and grandsons of those delivered from
the plague, some of them old parishioners who traveled hundreds of
miles for the event. All were permitted to kiss the church's prized
reliquary containing a bit of one of St. Roch's bones.* Because the feast of St. Roch falls within the
octave—eight-day observance—of the feast of the Assumption of the
Virgin , the two can be conveniently celebrated together.
