“Saint Joseph the Worker”

By Dr. John Lavin, Adjunct Professor of Education and former Director of the SJU Comey Institute for Industrial Relations

A bearded, barefoot, sinuous carpenter with tools commands our frozen and diminutive attention and forms the tableau of Saint Joseph poised in front of Barbelin Hall, the administrative heart of our University, named for the worker saint.

The statue dignifies manual labor. Its elevated construction worker’s upward gaze reminds teachers and learners alike that love is hard work. As Jesus’ father, Joseph would have (had he lived) visited his son in jail. He shortly afterward would have witnessed his son’s execution. Only Joseph would have beheld the intimate scenes of mother and child painted by Botticelli and Bellini and Raphael. Those sacred bonds motivated Joseph’s silent, enduring commitment to devote selfless hours to rude toil. He would have built the table where Jesus broke bread and celebrated life. That father’s dedication was to a son who came down from the cross to walk with people crucified by the world’s conflicts, as a Spanish Jesuit reminded us.

Our statue of Saint Joseph the Worker was sculpted by Australia’s Maurice Lowe. “What is honored by time has special strength,” has been Lowe’s anthem. As such, his only sculpture of a saint assumes a timeless eloquence. Crafted in bronze are the elemental images of Joseph’s workshop, wood and iron. The rough apron reminds the whole University of the endeavors of humble people to repair and cook and clean. While the burdens are apparent, the statue is there to instill hope. It was erected on campus in 1967. In that year, this memorial to the worker saint took shape in a nation torn by war and a city seeking racial healing. As such, the monument to Joseph was the gift of “Night School” students. Workers themselves, they would have been busy advancing their careers and attending courses in precious spare hours while supporting families. These were adult learners, and, by reflecting upon their lives, they found inspiration in Joseph, the worker saint.

Another aspect or face or personification cast like the robust shadow of Joseph, the worker, has been the University’s Industrial Relations Institute which spanned the period from the 1940s onward. Bringing thousands of union members from across the city, the Institute educated communities to stand up for their rights. Like many leaders from the workforce, Lucien Blackwell of the Dockworkers’ Association (ILA) and Wendell W. Young, III from the Supermarket Workers (UFCW) took courses and taught Organizing Methods in classes to advance justice for employees. Rev. Dennis J. Comey, S.J. (1896 – 1987) established the curriculum. A native north Philadelphian, Father Comey knew anti-immigrant prejudice as a child (one of thirteen) whose Irish parents had, at times, felt abandoned and destitute and isolated. Father knew poverty. His own father, a factory hand at Baldwin Locomotive, was fired for labor activism and had to beg for his job back to provide for the family’s needs. The young Dennis Comey balanced work and study and found his vocation in the Society of Jesus by way of Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School. Ultimately, the Institute took the name of its tireless leader and became “The Comey Institute of Saint Joseph’s University.” The Institute’s purpose was to welcome all creeds and races to come together. Under Saint Joseph’s influence, the hull of a cargo ship or the factory floor could be transformed into learning spaces where labor disputes became teachable moments, informed by poor and wealthy alike.

“We found a sense of sanctuary at Saint Joseph’s,” labor leader, Wendell W. Young, III told a congregation gathered in May of 1991, the centenary of the first social encyclical, Rerum Novarum, published by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. Alluding to Pope Leo XIII’s devotion to Saint Joseph, Mr. Young, III commented that, “Pope Leo understood the people who do the hard jobs. He saw that the protections that Saint Joseph offered his family basically are the church. Bishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador in 1980 promising hope to abject farmworkers, and Dolores Huerta in California, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 making the same promise at the Sanitation Workers’ strike where he gave his life to advocate economic justice, --These have all been people searching for peace through understanding and through the blessing of solidarity. Saint Joseph’s image represents these ethical and moral values through the generations of Philadelphia history that extend back to our beginnings at our first Jesuit parish at Willings Alley.”

While Saint Joseph is known not by having made statements and not by having appeared in the Bible or the Koran as a protagonist. He was quietly present by his actions, by accompanying his family, by witnessing and by being there for those who relied upon him. In times of social distance, the social justice of acting to protect others cries out from places where even more than speeches and grand statements, those actions that show support reside in the generosity of essential workers embodied by the statue of Saint Joseph that looks out over City Avenue. For us as a community, the deeper work will be learning the means to substantively express appreciation for the modest, human figure whose devotion to humanity stands in front of our buildings, our offices, our classrooms, and our better wisdom.