Pope with Vatican workers

Dressed in orange safety vests, green jumpsuits or other workers’ attire, Vatican gardeners, garbage collectors and cleaning crews joined Pope Francis for a 7 a.m. Mass March 22. Usually in the Vatican, “we’re the invisible ones,” Luciano Cecchetti, coordinator of the Vatican gardeners and sanitation workers, told Vatican Radio after the Mass. “To find ourselves before the Holy Father, at a Mass for us, is something that doesn’t happen every day. I turned and looked at the faces of the employees: We all left there misty-eyed,” he said. After the Mass, there was time for private prayers. Pope Francis joined the others, going to a seat in the last row of chairs in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he is staying. Before the employees headed back to work, Pope Francis greeted each of one of them. Almost all of the gardeners, Cecchetti said, offered to give the pope a guided visit of the Vatican Gardens. “He didn’t say no,” he said.