The Christophers: Pope’s Tailor Highlights Dignity of Work

Tony Rossi,

Director of Communications, The Christophers’

The election of a new pope this past spring has inspired numerous pieces of journalism about our Church. Looking beyond the pieces relating to politics and Church governance, one can find fascinating stories about people whose lives are uniquely intertwined into this moment in history. One such piece is Solène Tadié’s recent story for the National Catholic Register about Raniero Mancinelli, who has been tailor to four popes: St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and now Leo XIV. “They each had their own style, their own way,” Mancinelli told Tadié. “But I saw in all of them the same desire to serve Christ and the Church.”

As a teenager, Mancinelli began working as a tailor under the mentorship of a Salesian priest whom he credits with having “a wise and generous spirit,” adding, “I realized early on that what he was giving me was something precious.” Now 86 years old, Mancinelli still works by hand out of his shop in the Borgo Pio neighborhood near the Vatican’s main gate of Porta Sant’Anna. He laughed off a question about retirement, saying, “Me, retire? No way. In fact, I fully intend to continue serving the next popes!”

Mancinelli’s spirit exemplifies the dignity of work as expressed so beautifully 134 years ago by Pope Leo XIII in “Rerum Novarum,” an encyclical that established Catholic social teaching during the industrial age and that Pope Leo XIV recently referenced as a document that remains foundational in our own rapidly changing technological age. At the heart of “Rerum Novarum” is the call for the dignity of each individual to be respected in relation to their work. In his encyclical, Pope Leo XIII writes, “Workers are not to be treated as slaves; justice demands that the dignity of human personality be respected in them.”

The core message of “Rerum Novarum” has been echoed by every pope that followed Leo XIII. Early in his pontificate, on the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, Pope Francis said, “Work is fundamental to the dignity of the person. Work, to use an image, ‘anoints’ with dignity, fills us with dignity, makes us similar to God who has worked and still works, who always acts.”

In his encyclical “Laborem Exercens,” John Paul II writes, “The word of God’s revelation is profoundly marked by the fundamental truth that man, created in the image of God, shares by his work in the activity of the Creator and that, within the limits of his own human capabilities, man in a sense continues to develop that activity and perfects it as he advances further and further in the discovery of the resources and values contained in the whole of creation.”

In striving for a standard that all people deserve in their work, it is helpful to look at someone like Raniero Mancinelli because he has such a deep understanding of work’s importance to his own human dignity. Tadié writes of Mancinelli, “For him, tailoring is not simply a craft, but a deep calling rooted in faith.”

A focus of Tadié’s piece is the way in which Mancinelli’s work ties into what she describes as “a renewed fascination with Catholic beauty [that] has swept across the world, rekindled in particular by the solemn rites of Pope Francis’ funeral and the conclave that followed.” Mancinelli sees this as the work of Providence and notes that, when approached from a Catholic perspective, “Beauty is not an end in itself, but a powerful way of revealing the Person of Christ.”

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For free copies of the Christopher News Note RESPECT THOSE WHO LABOR AMONG YOU, write: The Christophers, 264 West 40th Street, Room 603, New York, NY 10018; or e-mail: mail@christophers.org