Saint Joseph and the Conclave of May 2025

7 May 2025

In the third week after Easter, the Church’s liturgy reminds us of how the risen Jesus consolidates the nascent Church with his presence and his teaching, before his Ascension into Heaven.

The Church, born on Calvary, is a visible society that needs a hierarchy to guide it. This hierarchy is made up of the Apostles and their successors, to whom Christ has given the power to teach and to administer the sacraments. In their ministry the Pastors of the Church are assisted by priests, subordinate to them in rank, represented by the seventy-two disciples. At the top of the hierarchy, as supreme pastor, is Peter, the prince of the Apostles, to whom Our Lord gave the keys of the Kingdom, which have been passed on to his 266 successors. Peter’s jurisdiction is universal, because universal is the mission that Christ entrusted to his apostles: “Going therefore, teach ye all nations” (Mt 28:19). In carrying out its mission, the Church will relive the sufferings of Calvary, but the persecutions, heresies, schisms and infidelities that it will meet with along its way will not arrest its triumph in time and eternity.

In the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, Jesus put the finishing touches to His Church, explaining orally to the Apostles the meaning of their mission and the tribulations they would encounter. Alongside Him is Mary, who, in the hours of the Passion, enclosed the whole Church in her person, because she was the only one whose faith never wavered. But Mary became Mother of the Church and Co-Redemptrix of the human race from the moment the Word took flesh in her womb. For this reason, the Church, even before being born on Calvary and baptised by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, had for its Patron St Joseph, Head of the Holy Family. In fact, St Joseph, in protecting Jesus, the Man-God, and His divine Mother, was protecting and continued to protect, in Heaven after his death, the Church militant on earth, especially in the profession of its faith. After the Blessed Virgin Mary, no human creature had such faith as St Joseph, and this is why, in the prayer “To you, O blessed Joseph”, we beg him to keep far from us “all blight of error and corruption” and to assist us propitiously from heaven “in this conflict with the powers of darkness”.

Many centuries were to go by before St Joseph’s role in the salvation of men, peoples and the Church began to be known. Complete knowledge of his power was reserved for recent times, in which the Church, tested to the limits of her strength, needed help never granted to the preceding eras. Therefore, just as the popes manifested the greatness of Mary, they also began to proclaim that of St Joseph. For this reason, on 8 December 1870, right after the invasion of Rome on 20 September, Blessed Pius IX, with the decree Quemadmodum Deus, declared St Joseph Patron of the Catholic Church. This decree gave canonical form to the truth according to which St Joseph protects the Church as during his life he protected the Holy Family with his authority.

With the apostolic letter Inclytum Patriarcham of 7 July 1871, Pius IX recalled that he had extended to the whole Church, as of 10 September 1847, the feast of the Patronage of St Joseph, which was already celebrated in many places thanks to a special indult of the Holy See. He explained:

“However, in these latter times in which a monstrous and abominable war has been declared against the Church of Christ, the devotion of the faithful to St Joseph has grown and progressed to such an extent that from all directions countless and fervent petitions have reached Us. These were recently renewed during the Sacred Ecumenical Council of the Vatican by groups of the faithful, and, what is more important, by many of Our venerable confreres, the cardinals and bishops of the Holy Roman Church. In their petitions they asked Us that in those radiant days, as a safeguard from the evils that threaten Us on every side, We might more efficaciously implore the compassion of God through the merits and intercession of St Joseph, declaring him Patron of the Universal Church. Moved by this request and in accordance with it, and after invoking the divine light, We deemed it just that this pious desire of so many should be granted. Therefore, by a special decree of Our Congregation of Sacred Rites (which We ordered to be proclaimed during the Solemn Mass in Our Patriarchal Basilicas [of] the Lateran, the Vatican and the Liberian, on the 8th of December of the last year, 1870, feast of the Immaculate Conception, his Spouse) We solemnly declared the blessed Patriarch Joseph Patron of the Universal Church, and ordered that his feast of 19 March be celebrated from that time on, all over the world, as a first-class double rite, yet without octave, on account of Lent.”

Precisely to celebrate the 150th anniversary of this solemn decree of Pius IX, Pope Francis proclaimed a Year of Saint Joseph from 8 December 2020 to 8 December 2021, which remains one of the happiest acts of his pontificate. Francis, however, leaves the Church in one of the most tormented situations in its history, and it does not seem coincidental that the conclave that is to elect his successor will open on 7 May, Wednesday of the second Sunday after the Octave of Easter, which is precisely the day on which the traditional liturgy celebrates St Joseph, Patron of the Church.

We do not know how St Linus, successor of St Peter, was elected at the end of the 60s of the first century, because there was not yet a codified system such as was the conclave of the following centuries, but we know that St Joseph certainly watched over that and all the subsequent elections of the popes, imploring the assistance of the Holy Spirit on those who were called to this supreme responsibility. And today let us implore St Joseph, Patron of the Church, that through His intercession the man most worthy of being the Vicar of Christ on earth may be chosen.

If the majority of the cardinals do not respond to the influence of the Holy Spirit and do not elect the right pope, St Joseph will protect the devout faithful in the harsh trials that will follow, instilling in them the courage to fight for the honour of the Church and an ardent trust in the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which the Head of the Holy Family confirmed with his benedictory presence at the last apparition of Fatima on 13 October 1917.