When the late Pope Francis declined to vacation in Castel Gandolfo, long a pontifical retreat from Rome’s summer heat, his staycations at humble Casa Santa Marta were counted among the habits of humility that endeared the Jesuit pope to admirers. Less overjoyed by what would become a 12-year absence were Castel Gandolfo’s shopkeepers, who rely on the annual windfall from press and hangers-on during the papal summer holiday. (Francis’ decision to open a museum at the site of the former papal respite somewhat alleviated the community’s commercial losses.)
This year Pope Leo quietly revived the summer vacation at Castel Gandolfo. Some may have clucked about it in facile comparison to the austerity shown by his predecessor, but Castel Gandolfo’s merchants were no doubt delighted by the return of their papal bonanza. And I will not join any tsk-tsking of the pope for escaping to Gandolfo’s friendly confines, nor for his on-the-fly decision to extend his July visit by two whole days (!).
By getting out of Rome and raising up his holiday schedule, Pope Leo sets a good example, especially for us Americans, a Calvin-cursed people suspect of the wanton idleness of vacation. The results of a survey conducted by the online travel service Expedia, in an admittedly self-serving annual study of international vacation habits, are instructive. Japanese workers are infamous fanatics of overworking, but Expedia reports that Americans rat-race right alongside them, declining to take the time-off they have earned.
The United States ranks at the global bottom, with an average of just 10 paid vacation days each year and a miserly 10 holidays. And while many other countries set minimum standards for paid days off for all workers, the United States issues no vacation mandate, leaving workers to rely on the kindness of their employers or the skill of their union negotiators. Federal holidays mean only that federal offices are closed, not that every employer has to offer a paid day off.
In stark contrast, European states mandate generous combinations of paid vacation days and national holidays—Austria leads with 38, Spain and France are tied at 36, and Germany requires 30 days off. But Iran actually provides the most time off globally, with 53 paid days off each year.
It gets worse. According to Expedia’s 2024 Vacation Deprivation Report, despite receiving the fewest days off of any country surveyed and expressing the greatest dissatisfaction about it, more than half of American workers—53 percent—still manage to leave vacation days on the table each fiscal year. We don’t even use up the lousy two weeks we get!
The U.S. Travel Association estimates that some 760 million vacation days go unused by American workers in a given year, and almost 300 million of them are forfeited at companies that don’t allow the rollover of paid time off.
Some structural issues are clearly in play among America’s non-vacationing set. Younger workers in America’s gig and remote-work economy are among the biggest non-takers of vacation time. Average annual paid time off days taken by U.S. workers have declined almost every year since 2000.
This is not exactly a new problem. Back in June 1924, an America editor felt obliged to explain how the change of scenery and circumstance offered by vacation make “a splendid investment”:
Life as it is lived in these United States is not so much an existence as a strenuous occupation. We live hard and we work fast, and the only machine we fail to care for is what Hamlet called “this machine.” Even a Ford would rebel under the treatment most of us give ourselves. Thus do we spindle and dessicate, in body and, especially, in mind. We know nothing of the poetry of life, which indeed may be a poor thing, but not without its use in making the wheels of being revolve without an excess of friction.
Like most Americans, I’ve mocked and admonished Europeans because of their overindulgent vacations, but how much did envy propel my condemnation of Europe’s Catholic escape-from-the-drudgery-of-work ethic? Can’t we figure out how to recreate it on these red, white and blue shores?
There is of course practical wisdom in getting away from it all, or as much of “it” as possible. The benefits of a truly restorative workbreak have long been documented by mental health experts, even by economists and human resources efficiency artists. Overwork leads to burnout and frazzled performance. A deplorable diminishment in productivity! Vacations help us reconnect with family and friends, even to reconnect with ourselves.
A worker’s right to time off to be with and care for his family, and to devote to his spiritual life, emphasizing the importance of legally protected rest periods (Sundays off!), was a radical proposition when our pope’s namesake Leo XIII wrote “Rerum Novarum.” That was the first encyclical in what would become a tradition of social justice instruction from the church.
“It is neither just nor human so to grind men down with excessive labor as to stupefy their minds and wear out their bodies,” Leo XIII wrote in 1891, imploring the state to accept its obligation to the common good and to protect working people “from the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making” (No. 42).
Part of that responsibility, 19th-century Leo insisted, was to ensure adequate time off—“a workman ought to have leisure and rest proportionate to the wear and tear of his strength, for waste of strength must be repaired by cessation from hard work.” Leo XIII was thinking of daily and weekly rest, but he also makes the case that creation is a gift to be shared and enjoyed by all, not just the folks wealthy enough to most take advantage of it.
Since then the church has developed more practical and explicit demands for the recreation and restoration that vacations help produce. In the Code of Canon Law, the church determines that in addition to time off for an annual spiritual retreat “a pastor is permitted to be absent from the parish each year for vacation for at most one continuous or interrupted month”—naturally after clearing the same with his ordinary.
What’s good enough for your pastor ought to be good enough for you. Are you taking your four weeks off?
America’s editors over decades insisted on the importance of the summer holiday, reminding Catholic vacationers not to miss their weekly Mass obligation and urging owners of these newfangled automobiles to get out on the road to visit out-of-the-way mission sites. Some seemed to deplore the idea of unscheduled time, like rainy day interruptions, that can occur during vacations, advising readers not to miss such opportunities to catch up on spiritual writing from Catholic authors.
I’ll agree with them that in addition to simply visiting new places, vacations indeed create opportunities for spiritual exercising often denied during a harried work week, but I reject any harumphing about the possibility of just doing nothing on vacation.
Just being is its own reward. Just being with a pint of Guinness and nothing else to do is not so bad either.
Do check with “your ordinary”—whether spouse or employer—but please don’t abandon to dismal fiscal expiration the time off that was hard-won by workers of the past. Use it to your physical and spiritual improvement, and if you indeed find yourself uneasy with nothing to do (heaven forfend!), feel free to devote your free time to advocacy on behalf of your U.S. workers and their families.
Too many of us still don’t have the guaranteed vacations, family leave and sick days that working people all around the world can take for granted because of the common good sense of their political establishments.
The pope’s six weeks on vacation was still pretty full of pope-y stuff to attend to—vacation or not. No way was he able to squirrel away five or six uninterrupted hours with a good book the way my grandfather did on Beach 113th Street every Rockaway summer. Popes just don’t get to vacation the way average schmoes do.
But Pope Leo promised to squeeze in some basketball and tennis during his vacance, something very American of him. Can we do any less but give holidaying a try?
Let’s be like Pope Leo. Let’s take our vacation days without any guilt. Let’s go somewhere different with our families. Let’s just relax. You don’t have to go all the way to Castel Gandolfo; the Jersey Shore will do in a pinch.
More from America
- Pope Leo just extended his vacation. What do popes do to relax?
- Priests need a summer vacation, too.
- Mass on vacation: The beauty (and anxiety) of going to a new parish
- Pope Francis doesn’t spend summer vacation at the papal summer castle. So what does he do to relax?
- Vacation is a pro-life issue
A deeper dive
- A Theology of Vacations
- Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891)
- ‘Rerum Novarum’ is 130 years old. What would Leo XIII say about today’s gig economy?
- Where Was the Birthplace of the American Vacation?
The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past us each week. For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches.
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