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. 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, and the objections to it, are in our guide What Is 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:
| When | What you do | Indulgence |
|---|---|---|
| Each day, Nov 1–8 | Devoutly visit a cemetery and pray for the dead, even if only mentally | Plenary, for the souls in purgatory only |
| Nov 2 (All Souls Day) | Devoutly visit a church or oratory and pray the Our Father and the Creed there. With the consent of the Ordinary this may be moved to the Sunday before or after, or to All Saints Day. | Plenary, for the souls in purgatory only |
| Any day of the year | Devoutly visit a cemetery and pray for the dead, even if only mentally | Partial, for the souls in purgatory only |
| Any day of the year | Devoutly pray Lauds or Vespers of the Office of the Dead, or the Eternal Rest (Requiem aeternam) | Partial, for the souls in purgatory only |
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.
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.
The conditions, read closely
Norm 20 of the Enchiridion sets out what every plenary indulgence requires. Read it slowly, because most summaries flatten it:
- Detachment from all sin. The norm 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 any condition is not met, the indulgence is partial instead (norm 20 § 4). You lose nothing by trying.
- The work itself, done at the time and in the way the grant prescribes: the cemetery visit with prayer, or the church visit with the Our Father and the Creed.
- 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). EWTN News reports the working window as about 20 days either side.
- Holy Communion, one for each plenary indulgence (norm 20 § 2). The norm advises receiving it on the same day as the work.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 on the Saturday before Sexagesima or before Pentecost; and in Germany there was a day of prayer for the dead on October 1.
St. Odilo, abbot of Cluny (died 1048), 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. Liège was the first diocese to adopt it, under Bishop Notger (died 1008). 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.