Saint Joseph the Worker church, Church building in Timóteo, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

The Igreja São José Operário is a Catholic church built by the Acesita steel company in 1947 on Praça 1º de Maio in the Centro-Norte (Acesita) district of Timóteo. The original chapel seats about 100 people and holds 300 standing. A larger church, Nossa Senhora do Carmo, was built behind it and inaugurated in 2023.

The Acesita steel company built the church in 1947 for the religious services of its workers' village in what is now Timóteo's Centro-Norte. The workers' involvement led to the creation of the São José Parish, split from Coronel Fabriciano's São Sebastião Parish, with Father Abdala Jorge as first parish priest. In January 2014 the state prosecutor's office for cultural heritage attested the building's historical, landscape and symbolic value, after a 2013 inquiry blocked a proposed expansion.

The church is also called Igrejinha da Praça or Igrejinha do Centro, and it is the matriz paroquial of the Paróquia São José. Its old temple seats about 100 people and holds 300 standing, so celebrations often spill outside.

The old church seats about 100 people and holds roughly 300 standing, so crowded celebrations spill outside onto Praça 1º de Maio. The larger Nossa Senhora do Carmo church behind it, opened in 2023, seats 1,200 and has a ground-floor reception and parish office. The Timirim church is farther out and has limited parking and accessibility.

The 2013 attempt to expand the church was blocked by the Timóteo cultural heritage prosecutor; in January 2014 the state heritage prosecutor attested the building's historical, landscape and symbolic value, so any works must not alter the 1947 original. A 2014 proposal to dig an underground extension would have made it Brazil's first subterranean church. Instead, a new 1,200-seat church was built behind it, inaugurated on 14 December 2023.