It is fair to say that the Pope won’t be falling asleep in front of the television this Christmas, like the rest of us. Francis, who hasn’t watched the box since 1990, is a pope for a workaholic age. He forgoes the papal summer holiday at Castel Gandolfo, a tradition started by Paul VI, and John Allen, the veteran Vatican-watcher, says the 79-year-old Pope’s schedule would “destroy people half his age”.
Although the Holy Father says he does take time off at the Vatican, his preaching hints at a dislike of staying still. Last week he even told staff at a charity that helps unemployed youth: “There is no vocation to laziness.” This work ethic might be effective at driving through Vatican reforms. But, by giving the impression that holiness is found through work alone, is he possibly setting a poor example for the over-worked faithful? As far back as 2013 Vatican observers were calling on the Pope to take a holiday lest he drive himself too hard – and to set an example to overworked professionals in a world that is suffering from chronic overwork.
Francis grew up in an extremely hard-working family. He took on his first job, as a cleaner, in his early teens, and worked right through his youth. According to biographer Austen Ivereigh, Jorge Mario Bergoglio never went on holiday as a young man. While the Pope Emeritus spends his summer in Castle Gandolfo, Francis never rests as Rome wilts in the heat.
When he was elected in 2013 it was first reported that he would not be taking holidays in solidarity with the poor. But it soon transpired that the Pope has just never holidayed.
Jack Valero of Opus Dei, which has a strong spirituality of work, says: “I think that in Argentina he found that some of the people he knew couldn’t take holidays, so this became his custom, out of solidarity. Now he’s become accustomed to not taking holidays.”
Francis’s work ethic might have grown out of economic necessity in Argentina, but in much of the developed world overwork has become a “credential” of the prosperous classes. Long hours have become almost a sign of social status. In America, for example, while the best-paid workers once worked on average far shorter hours than the low-paid, by 2006 they were twice as likely to work long hours.
A 2008 Harvard survey found that 94 per cent of professionals worked 50 hours or more a week, and almost half worked 65 hours or more. This has also become an economic necessity for some, with housing costs making long hours and double incomes a must. Such is the spread of hard work that the Japanese even have a word for death from overwork: karoshi.
The upper middle class of the 21st century, in particular, are obsessed with hard work – part of an Americanised culture that has replaced old Europe’s glorification of amateurism, eccentricity and boozy lunches. Such languid behaviour has gone of fashion and with it, some argue, a more slow-paced, family-orientated life.
Yet the latest business theorists might well tell the Pope to slow down. There is growing evidence that overwork not only harms health – causing, at worst, depression and heart disease – but also reduces effectiveness in the workplace.
Perhaps Catholics should take a leaf out of Benedict XVI’s more relaxed book. Despite having a Teutonic work ethic, the former pope has never been afraid to take the necessary steps to relax. One of the Pope Emeritus’s favourite pastimes is playing the piano, and a 2011 documentary quoted one Vatican commentator saying: “Schubert can occasionally be heard emanating from the papal apartments.” Not that Benedict XVI was ever idle, of course, but he was certainly not a workaholic.
Yet Francis is still filled with great energy at 79 and is determined to fill Catholics with apostolic zeal. He recently told the faithful: “Move forward … Stagnant water becomes putrid.”
Jack Valero believes that the secret to Pope Francis’s ability to work hard is prayer. That is what distinguishes him from numerous other work-hungry 21st-century leaders, he says.
“Francis wakes up at 4:30 every morning and does two hours of prayer. By the time he has breakfast he has been praying for three hours. Then he has a nap in the afternoon. He works very hard but he also does a lot of prayer. The clue to me is that he spends so much time praying he has almost supernatural strength, it gives him balance.”
Many employers respond to the problem of overwork by encouraging practices such as “mindfulness”. In a similar way, prayer can help very hard-working Catholics to find balance. Valero says: “He does a lot for a 79-year-old, he does eight hours a day and he prays for four hours. But Francis has a lot of balance – he spends a lot of hours with God.”
Significantly, this year, while Francis did not take any holidays, he cancelled all formal engagements for a month and took some time off to read. The Pope has in the past been rightly critical of an economic system that brings us anxiety and has caused people to lose a “healthy culture of leisure”. Let us hope that, over the next couple of weeks, he manages to find some time to relax – ahead of a gruelling 12 months scheduled for 2016.
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