Collection tells story of St. Roch

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

St. Roch appears in some unexpected places.
But then, what would you expect of a pilgrim who healed plague victims, died wrongly imprisoned and is now invoked for those with infectious diseases?
Images of him and churches named for him – some as far away as Thailand, Tajikistan and the Philippines – were displayed at St. Roch Church in Oxford recently for parishioners to see.
“Some people are just amazed at how widespread he is,” says parishioner Robert Clouthier, who set up his St. Roch collection in the parish hall for their patron’s Aug. 16 feast day. “But he’s our saint; we ought to know him. I feel like he’s part of the family.”
A member of St. Roch’s since 1957, Mr. Clouthier once thought theirs was the only parish in the United States named for this saint, whom he never heard about, but it isn’t.
“All I had was a holy card and … medal,” he says.
In the 1990s their parish started a St. Roch novena and he got his confirmation students thinking about their patron, he says. He sought in vain for St. Roch statues for them, and finally ordered a dozen or more through Boucher’s Good Books in Worcester. He gave some to parishioners too.
Looking online for holy cards, Mr. Clouthier found other St. Roch statues and medals and started buying them. Later he found postcards of St. Roch churches, and looked up those churches online.
He figures he now has more than 100 pieces in his collection. Some have led him to deeper reflection.
About 20 years ago he bought a copy of a painting because it shows St. Roch interceding with the Blessed Mother for victims of the 1720 plague in Marseille, France.
Recently he learned that the original was commissioned in 1780 by the City of Marseille’s Health Department for their chapel.
“At that time, they thought they were advanced, but they knew … God was still the author of life, and they knew enough to pray for that,” Mr. Clouthier muses. “I’m coming to realize people knew not everyone was going to survive” any plague, despite the intercession of the saints. And even when plagues abated, devotion to saints, including St. Roch, grew.
St. Roch’s intercession is still invoked, as it was at St. Roch’s in Oxford during the coronavirus pandemic.
Different sources say St. Roch was born in the late-13th or mid-14th century and died sometime in the 1300s. There is also ambiguity about details of his life.
It is said he was born at Montpellier, France, where his father was governor. Orphaned as a young man, St. Roch gave his wealth to the poor. He outfitted as a pilgrim and set out for Italy.
On his journey, this saint, who was said to have a red, cross-shaped birthmark, cared for plague victims and healed them with the sign of the cross. Contracting the plague himself, he retreated to the forest, where a dog brought him bread, stories say.
Once healed, St. Roch returned to Montpellier, where he was thought to be a spy disguised as a pilgrim, and was imprisoned. After his death in prison five years later, his identity was discovered by the red cross on his breast.
In 1414 the fathers of the Council of Constance ordered prayers and processions in St. Roch’s honor, and the plague there immediately ended, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia on newadvent.org. Many miracles have been attributed to him.
Mr. Clouthier’s favorite statue of St. Roch doesn’t include the saint’s plague wound or the dog. It simply shows he’s a pilgrim, with a pilgrim’s hat, walking staff and small bundle.     
“He’s a young man on a journey,” Mr. Clouthier explains. “He had a plan to go to Rome and proclaim his fidelity to the Church. He wanted to see the pope. It says to me, we’re all on a journey. …
“All the stories we have were what happened on his journey. He didn’t run away from sick people. When he got sick himself, he didn’t give up on his faith.”
Mr. Clouthier came to see St. Roch as a prophet as a result of studying a painting which shows him with the Blessed Mother and her Infant Son, John the Baptist as a child, and the elderly Anna, who saw Baby Jesus when he was presented in the temple.
“What’s St. Roch doing there?” Mr. Clouthier wondered. But, pondering the painting, he came to the conclusiuon that St. Roch was one of five prophets shown. St. Roch was baptized to be a priest, prophet and king –  like we are.
Mr. Clouthier has also experienced the unexpected through other pieces in his collection.
With a St. Roch card he ordered came a stranger’s 1910 first Communion card. So now he prays for that first communicant  and asks her intercession.
Traveling in Vermont, Mr. Clouthier encountered an artist named Muriel Rice engraving on slate, and asked if she could make him a picture of St. Roch. She said her husband, Edward, could.
So he mailed Mr. Rice a St. Roch brochure and Mr. Rice sent him a sketch, offering to make another if Mr. Clouthier didn’t like it.
“I wrote him back and said, ‘I like it; send it,’” Mr. Clouthier recalls. “Good thing I did.” He says that, shortly after Mr. Rice finished it, he got sick and died.
“I hope he met St. Roch,” Mr. Clouthier says.

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