St. Joseph was the early guardian of our Lady and the foster father of the incarnate word. All that is reliably known of this ‘just man’ (Mt 1:19) is contained in the 1st and 2nd chapters of the Gospel of St. Mathew and St. Luke. From the fact that St. Joseph is not again mentioned in the Bible after finding boy Jesus in the temple, it has been reasonably inferred that he did not live to see the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry.

Pope Pius IX proclaimed him the patron saint of the universal Church and on 8th December, 1870 at the petition of over 300 prelates to the Holy Father in the first Vatican Council (1869 1870). The Catholic Church, to use the words of Pope Pius XI, ‘teaches that St. Joseph has been designated by God as the master of his goods and of his household’. In 1955, Pope Pius XII added the title ‘Patron of the Workers’ to St. Joseph and the feast is celebrated on 1st May. On 19th March, the church commemorates the death of St. Joseph. He is invoked for happy marriage, happy death, and for hope in the hopeless cases.