Two Feasts for Saint Joseph?

The Catholic Church celebrates two distinct feasts for Saint Joseph: the feast of his role as the husband of Mary on March 19, and the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker on May 1. While the March feast entered the universal calendar in 1324, Pope Pius XII established the May 1 feast in 1955.

The addition of the Saint Joseph the Worker feast addressed perceptions, particularly in Europe, that the Church was not sufficiently focused on the needs of ordinary laborers compared to Communist movements. Because Communists used May 1 to celebrate their own movement, Pope Pius XII selected that date to honor Saint Joseph. This religious observance followed earlier efforts by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI to address labor concerns through the encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno.

On May 1, 1933, Dorothy Day released the first copies of The Catholic Worker newspaper to challenge Communist claims that only their movement advocated for the interests of working men and women. Devotion to Saint Joseph has seen a recent increase through the men's movement in the Church and the 1989 apostolic exhortation Protector of the Redeemer by Saint John Paul II.