All Souls Day: The Day the Church Prays for All Her Dead

What All Souls Day is

November opens with two days that belong together. On November 1, All Saints Day, the Church honors everyone already in heaven; the night before is All Hallows' Eve. On November 2 she turns to the rest of her dead: those who died in God's friendship but are not yet ready to see Him. “All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1030). The Church calls that purification purgatory (CCC 1031). The full teaching is in our guide What Is Purgatory?, and the Protestant objections to it are answered in Sed Contra: Purgatory.

All Souls Day exists because those souls can be helped. “From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice” (CCC 1032). Scripture records the practice before Christ: “It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins” (2 Maccabees 12:46, Douay-Rheims). One day a year, the whole Church does it together.

All Saints Day is a holy day of obligation; All Souls Day is not. Go to Mass anyway. Nothing you can offer for your dead outranks it.

The November indulgences, in the Church's own words

An indulgence is “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven” (CCC 1471), and “since the faithful departed now being purified are also members of the same communion of saints, one way we can help them is to obtain indulgences for them” (CCC 1479). The grants for the dead are concession 29 of the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, the Church's official handbook of indulgences (fourth edition, 1999). Its Latin text opens:

Plenaria indulgentia, animabus in Purgatorio detentis tantummodo applicabilis, conceditur christifideli qui 1° singulis diebus, a primo usque ad octavum novembris, coemeterium devote visitaverit et, vel mente tantum, pro defunctis exoraveritEnchiridion Indulgentiarum (1999), concession 29 § 1, 1°

That is: a plenary indulgence, applicable only to the souls held in purgatory, is granted to the faithful who on each day from the first to the eighth of November devoutly visit a cemetery and pray for the dead, even if only mentally. The Apostolic Penitentiary describes the two plenary grants this way in its own English, in a 2020 decree that calls the handbook the Manual of Indulgences:

the Plenary Indulgence for those who visit a cemetery and pray for the deceased, even if only mentally, normally established only for the individual days from 1 to 8 NovemberApostolic Penitentiary, decree of 22 October 2020

the Plenary Indulgence of 2 November, established on the occasion of the Commemoration of all the deceased faithful for those who piously visit a church or oratory and recite the “Our Father” and the “Creed” thereApostolic Penitentiary, decree of 22 October 2020

The same concession adds two partial indulgences, also applicable only to the souls in purgatory, that run all year. In full:

Two things in that table are easy to miss. The plenary grants can only be applied to the dead, never to yourself. And the cemetery grant is daily: it is not one indulgence for the week but one for each of the eight days. None of it involves money; the old charge that indulgences sell forgiveness is answered in Sed Contra: Indulgences.

In 2020 the Penitentiary extended both plenary grants to any days of November because of the pandemic, and it renewed that decree for 2021. Those were decrees for those years. The standing grant is November 1 to 8. As of October 19, 2026, the Penitentiary's document list on vatican.va shows no such decree for 2026.

The conditions, read closely

Norms 17 and 20 of the Enchiridion set out what every plenary indulgence requires. Read them slowly, because most summaries flatten them:

1. The state of grace. To be capable of gaining any indulgence a man must be baptized, not excommunicated, and “in statu gratiae saltem in fine operum praescriptorum”: in the state of grace at least when the prescribed works are finished (norm 17 § 1). He must also intend, at least in a general way, to gain it (norm 17 § 2). Without the state of grace no indulgence is gained, plenary or partial (The Gift of the Indulgence, n. 3).
2. Detachment from all sin. Norm 20 requires “omnimodam exclusionem affectus erga quodcumque peccatum etiam veniale”: the complete exclusion of attachment to any sin, even venial. If that full disposition is missing, or Confession, Communion or the prayer for the Pope's intention is missing, the indulgence is partial instead (norm 20 § 4). You lose nothing by trying.
3. The work itself, done at the time and in the way the grant prescribes (norm 17 § 2): the cemetery visit with prayer, or the church visit with the Our Father and the Creed. For a church visit tied to a day, norm 14 sets the clock: the visit “fieri potest a meridie diei praecedentis usque ad mediam noctem quae statutum diem claudit” — it can be made from noon of the day before until the midnight that closes the day itself. Where the grant is kept on November 2, that runs from noon on Sunday, November 1, to midnight at the end of Monday, November 2.
4. Sacramental Confession. It can be made several days before or after the work (norm 20 § 3), and one Confession can serve several plenary indulgences (norm 20 § 2). The Apostolic Penitentiary puts the window at “within several days (about 20) before or after the indulgenced act” (The Gift of the Indulgence, 29 January 2000, n. 5).
5. Holy Communion, one for each plenary indulgence (norm 20 § 2). The norm advises receiving it on the same day as the work.
6. Prayer for the Pope's intention, one for each plenary indulgence. One Our Father and one Hail Mary fulfill it, though any other prayer of your own devotion also does (norm 20 § 5).

And one limit governs the whole week: Indulgentia plenaria semel tantum in die acquiri potest — a plenary indulgence can be gained only once a day (norm 18 § 1). Eight days, eight possible plenary indulgences, each needing its own Communion. If Confession is the obstacle, our guide to how to go to Confession walks you through it. The rest of the rules for any plenary indulgence, and the works that grant one on any day of the year, are in What Is a Plenary Indulgence?

See also: A Prayer for the Pope

An eight-day plan for November 1–8, 2026

This is a way to use the whole octave, built only from the grants and norms above. Do what you can; a day missed is a day missed, not a failure.

1. Before November 1: write the names. Father, mother, grandparents, friends, the men you served with, the parishioner nobody remembers. Book a Mass intention for one of them at your parish office. Go to Confession in the days before the octave; one Confession covers the week.
2. Sunday, November 1 — All Saints Day. A holy day of obligation and a Sunday. After Mass and Communion, visit a cemetery and pray for the dead. Pray an Our Father and a Hail Mary for the Pope's intention.
3. Monday, November 2 — All Souls Day. Go to Mass and receive Communion. Then either visit a church and pray the Our Father and the Creed there, or visit a cemetery and pray. Only one plenary indulgence can be gained in a day, so choose one.
4. Tuesday, November 3, through Sunday, November 8. Each day you can get to Mass, receive Communion, visit a cemetery on the way home or at lunch, pray for the dead, and pray for the Pope's intention. Offer each day's indulgence for the souls in purgatory; the Church applies them to the dead, never to you.
5. Every day, with the household. Pray the Eternal Rest for your dead by name at meals or at night prayers. It carries a partial indulgence on its own, all year.

The rest of the year, the work goes on: Masses offered, the Rosary, almsgiving and penance for the dead. Our guide How Catholics Pray for the Dead covers it in full, and Plenary Indulgence: What It Is explains how indulgences work.

Why a priest may say three Masses on All Souls Day

On All Souls Day every priest may offer Mass three times. Pope Benedict XV granted this in the Apostolic Constitution Incruentum Altaris of August 10, 1915:

Liceat omnibus in Ecclesia universa Sacerdotibus, quo die agitur Sollemnis Commemoratio omnium fidelium defunctorum, ter sacrum facereBenedict XV, Incruentum Altaris (1915), I

That is, all priests in the whole Church may offer Mass three times on the day of the Solemn Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. He set the intentions too: one Mass for any intention the priest chooses, with an offering; one, without any offering, for all the faithful departed; and one for the intention of the Pope.

The privilege was older than 1915. The constitution records a custom in the Kingdom of Aragon, which Pope Benedict XIV extended on August 26, 1748, so that every priest in the realms of Spain and Portugal could say three Masses that day. Benedict XV extended it to the whole Church in the first year of his pontificate, with war spread across almost all of Europe, writing that he saw “tantam hominum copiam, aetate florentium, immaturam in proelio mortem occumbere” — so many men in the flower of their age meeting an untimely death in battle. In its 2020 decree the Apostolic Penitentiary again urged every priest to celebrate Mass three times on All Souls Day under the same constitution.

Where the day came from

Praying for the dead is as old as the Church, but one fixed day for all of them came later. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) traces it: in the early days of Christianity the names of the departed were entered in the diptychs; in the sixth century Benedictine monasteries held a commemoration of their dead at Pentecost; Spain in St. Isidore's time (he died in 636) kept such a day; and in Germany there was a day of prayer for the dead on October 1.

St. Odilo, abbot of Cluny, ordered the commemoration of all the faithful departed to be kept every year in the monasteries of his congregation. From there it spread to the other Benedictines and to the Carthusians. The day's formal name is the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed.

In Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America the same days are kept as Día de los Muertos. Catholic Answers calls it “a Mexican celebration deeply connected to All Souls Day,” in which families decorate graves and build altars (ofrendas). The Catholic core of it is this page's subject: the dead are prayed for, not merely remembered.