VATICAN CITY // Celebrating Mass on May 1, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker and Italy’s Labor Day, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández praised Pope Francis’ commitment to work and human dignity while sharply criticizing what he called the “inhumanity” of meritocracy.
Cardinal Fernández, an Argentinian who Pope Francis appointed prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and authored the controversial document Fiducia Supplicans, presided over the Mass celebrated on the sixth day of the Novemdiales in suffrage of the Roman Pontiff Francis at 5 p.m. in the Vatican Basilica.
“We cannot ignore that we are also celebrating Workers’ Day, which was so dear to Pope Francis,” said Cardinal Fernández, an Argentinian prelate and prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Quoting the late pontiff, he recalled: “I will never tire of referring to the dignity of work. Someone claimed that I propose a life without effort, or that I despise the culture of work.” He continued, “In fact, some dishonest people said that Pope Francis defended the lazy, the drones, the delinquents, the idle.”
Cardinal Fernández recounted Pope Francis’ own rebuttal to those accusations: “Imagine if this can be said of me, a descendant of Piedmontese—who did not come to this country with the desire to be supported, but with a great desire to roll up their sleeves and build a future for their families.”
“It is clear they had annoyed him,” the cardinal said of the business leaders the Pope addressed. “Because for Pope Francis, work expresses and nourishes the dignity of the human being, allows him to develop his abilities, helps him to increase relationships, allows him to feel like a collaborator of God.”
Fernández added: “Behind this love for work there is a strong conviction of Pope Francis: the infinite value of every human being, an immense dignity that must never be lost.”
A critique of false ‘meritocracy’
Turning to the concept of meritocracy, Cardinal Fernández echoed Pope Francis’ concern over how it can be misused.
“Now pay attention,” he quoted Pope Francis. “Another thing is some false talk about ‘meritocracy.’ Because one thing is to evaluate a person’s merits and reward their efforts. Another thing is the false ‘meritocracy,’ which leads us to think that only those who have succeeded in life have merits.”
He contrasted a privileged man with a working poor father, recalling a street worker he once saw in Buenos Aires. “Once I asked him, ‘But how many hours do you work?’ He replied: ‘Between 12 and 15 hours a day. Because I have several children to support and I want them to have a better future than mine.’”
“And yet,” Cardinal Fernández recalled, “a well-dressed person who was passing by said to him, ‘Go get a job, lazy!’ Those words seemed horrendously cruel and vain.”
The cardinal asked: “Are the less gifted not human beings? Do the weak not have the same dignity as us? Must those who are born with fewer possibilities just limit themselves to surviving?”
Pope Francis, the worker
“Allow me to also present Pope Francis as a worker,” Cardinal Fernández said. “He not only spoke about the value of work, but throughout his life he was someone who lived his mission with great effort, passion, and commitment.”
He described the late pope’s tireless ethic: “He never took a few days off. In Buenos Aires, in the summer, if you didn’t find a priest, you definitely found him. He never went out to dinner, to the theater, for a walk, or to see a movie.”
Cardinal Fernández concluded by linking Pope Francis’ labor to his spiritual life. “What I want to show is to what extent he understood that his work was his mission … it was the expression of his concern for the good of others.”
He concluded, “Let us ask Saint Joseph to give a strong hug to our dear Pope Francis in heaven.”
