St Joseph the Worker

May 1 is the feast day of Saint Joseph the Worker, reflecting his status as a carpenter and patron of workers.

While Saint Joseph has his principal feast day on March 19, the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker was introduced by Pope Pius XII in 1955 as an ecclesiastical counterpart to International Workers Day, also held on May 1.

Saint Joseph was the foster father of Jesus and is held up by the Church as a model of the holiness of human labour. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is referred to as “the carpenter’s son”.

Pope Pius XII said Saint Joseph was a model of holiness to all workers.

“The spirit flows to you and to all men from the heart of the God-man, Savior of the world, but certainly, no worker was ever more completely and profoundly penetrated by it than the foster father of Jesus, who lived with Him in closest intimacy and community of family life and work,” he said.

The feast day was established to both honour Saint Joseph and to make people aware of the dignity of human work, which has long been celebrated as a participation in the creative work of God.

Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Laborem Exercens: “the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide [social] changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society.”