Angelus News | March 15, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 10

Why Francis
goes to Joseph
The pope’s life and pontificate
have been marked with a
special devotion to Saint
Joseph, whose feast day the
Church celebrates March19
BY INÉS SAN MARTÍN / ANGELUS
ROME — Wednesday, March 13, marked the sixth
anniversary of the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio
as the successor of Saint Peter. He was installed as
Pope Francis five days later, on March 19, 2013, which also
happened to be the day on which the Catholic Church
honors Saint Joseph.
In reality, it probably wasn’t a coincidence.
The Argentine pontiff is known to have a strong devotion
for Jesus’ earthly father, to the point that he has a statue of
a sleeping Joseph in his room. Under it, there’s a “mattress
of notes” the pope has left for the saint’s attention, containing
problems and challenges he faces and doesn’t know
how to resolve.
The pontiff has tremendous confidence, telling a group
of Oblates of St. Joseph last August that he’s put his needs
before the saint for decades and “never, ever has he told
me no.
“For more than 40 years, I’ve been praying a prayer that I
found in an old French missal which says of Saint Joseph
— ‘dont la puissance sait rendre possibles les choses
impossibles’ (‘whose power makes possible things that are
impossible’),” Francis told the Oblates, adding that Joseph
has never let him down.
Francis has long had the image of the sleeping Joseph, depicting
him being warned by God about the danger posed
by King Herod.
According to the biblical narrative, it was in a dream that
Joseph accepted his role as the foster father of Jesus and
mankind, a “yes” that would turn him into the archetypal
figure of “protector” of Mary and Jesus and the whole
Church, as Francis said during his first homily in 2013.
“Saint Joseph does not look for friends to vent or ask for
suggestions, he does not go to the psychiatrist to interpret
the dream ... no: he believed,” Francis said in 2017. “He
Pope Francis shows the sleeping posture of a statue of Saint Joseph he
keeps on his desk while giving a talk during a meeting with families in the
Mall of Asia Arena in Manila, Philippines, in 2015. The pope spoke about
his devotion to Joseph, foster father of Jesus, and his practice of writing
prayers on pieces of paper and slipping them under the statue so Joseph
could sleep on them.
moved forward. He handled the situation.” In a 2018
tweet, Francis hailed Joseph as a “man of dreams, but not a
dreamer.”
The newly elected pope used that image of Joseph as a
call to action in his installation homily six years ago.
“Let us be ‘protectors’ of creation, protectors of God’s plan
inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the
environment. Let us not allow omens of destruction and
death to accompany the advance of this world!” the new
pope said.
Since then, much of his pontificate can be summarized in
what he said that day to 200,000 faithful who had gathered
in St. Peter’s Square: “Let us never forget that authentic
power is service, and that the pope too, when exercising
power, must enter ever more fully into that service which
has its radiant culmination on the cross.”
The successor of Peter, Francis continued, “must be
inspired by the lowly, concrete and faithful service which
marked Saint Joseph and, like him, he must open his arms
to protect all of God’s people and embrace with tender
affection the whole of humanity, especially the poorest, the
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/PAUL HARING
22 • ANGELUS • March 15, 2019