Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández elevates the chalice during the sixth Novendiales Mass for Pope Francis on May 1, 2025, in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, May 1, 2025 / 17:23 pm (CNA).

Not only did Pope Francis value and promote the dignity of labor, he was someone who personally worked extremely hard, finding joy and rest in work itself, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández said at the sixth Novendiales Mass.

“What I want to show, however, is to what extent [Pope Francis] understood that his work was his mission, his everyday work was his response to God’s love, it was an expression of his concern for the good of others,” Fernández said in St. Peter’s Basilica on May 1.

“For these reasons,” the cardinal continued, “work itself was his joy, his nourishment, his rest. He experienced what the first reading we heard says: ‘None of us lives for himself.’”

The Argentinian cardinal, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and a close personal friend of the late Francis, celebrated Mass with the College of Cardinals as part of the Church’s nine days of mourning.

The 62-year-old Fernández spoke about Pope Francis “as a worker” on the May 1 feast of St. Joseph the Worker, one of the late pope’s favorite saints. May 1 is also Labor Day (also called Workers’ Day) in many countries, including Italy.

Pope Francis “not only talked about the value of work, but his whole life was one who lived his mission with great effort, passion, and compromise,” Fernández, also known by the nickname “Tucho,” said.

“It was always a mystery to me to understand how he could endure, even being a large man with several illnesses, such a demanding work rhythm. He not only worked in the morning with various meetings, audiences, celebrations, and gatherings but also all afternoon. And it seemed to me really heroic that with the very little strength he had in his last days he made himself strong enough to visit a prison.”

The cardinal emphasized that the fact that Francis never took a day off, as pope and as an archbishop and priest in Buenos Aires, should not be taken as an example, “but his life is an incentive to carry out our work generously.”

In his homily, Fernández also reflected on the privileged situation some people find themselves in and gave examples of how two men may work equally hard but one will be more successful, while the other struggles to feed his family.

According to the cardinal, Pope Francis warned against a “false meritocracy” that believes only those who are successful in life have merit while the poor do not.

“Behind this love of work is a strong conviction of Pope Francis: the infinite value of every human being, an immense dignity that should never be lost, that under no circumstances can be ignored or forgotten,” he said.