All Souls' Day: Where It Comes From and How It Is Kept

The two days work as a pair. All Saints' Day looks toward those who, in the Vatican's words, have attained God's glory. All Souls' Day turns to those who died marked by faith and asks the living to pray for them. The Conferencia Episcopal Española, the Spanish bishops' conference, describes them the same way: 1 November honors the saints, and 2 November is a day of prayer for the dead.

The evening before All Saints' Day has a famous name of its own. Halloween, on 31 October, is the vigil or eve of All Saints' Day, as the Archdiocese of Baltimore explains, so the three dates sit side by side on the calendar.

Why pray for the dead at all? The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches a final purification after death, and it recommends prayer and the Eucharistic sacrifice offered for the departed. In his 1997 Angelus, John Paul II spoke of the sorrow of separation from loved ones alongside the hope that death is a passage toward eternal life. Six years later, in his 2003 Angelus, he described the day's purpose: to pray for the dead, to remember them within the communion of the Church, and to express Christian hope in resurrection.

The Catholic tradition credits the annual observance to Odilo, abbot of the great monastery of Cluny in Burgundy, France. Vatican News gives the year as 998, when Odilo required the monasteries under Cluny to commemorate the dead on 2 November.

Historians place the surviving evidence a little later. Klemens Löffler, writing on St. Odilo for the Catholic Encyclopedia in 1911, says Odilo established the observance at Cluny and its houses probably after 1030. Michael E. Hoenicke Moore, in a 2003 study of Cluny, dates its introduction to about 1024 to 1033. So, 998 is the traditional Cluniac date, and the paper trail historians can follow begins a few decades after it.

The idea of a yearly prayer for dead members was older than Odilo. Francis Mershman's 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia article on All Souls' Day records sixth-century Benedictine monasteries holding commemorations of their deceased brothers at Whitsuntide, and says that Odilo's annual commemoration spread from Cluny to other Benedictine and Carthusian communities. According to the Spanish bishops' conference, the 2 November observance was adopted throughout the Latin Rite in the sixteenth century. In 1915, Pope Benedict XV permitted priests to celebrate several Masses on All Souls' Day.

At the heart of the day is the Mass. The US bishops' General Instruction of the Roman Missal describes Masses for the dead, in which the Eucharistic sacrifice is offered for those who have died. The day also brings prayers of suffrage, prayers asking help for the dead, and the remembrance of names, so the people being prayed for are named rather than left general.

Outside the church, John Paul II encouraged cemetery visits, care for graves and prayer at the graveside. For someone wondering what to do on the day, the practices are simple and personal: go to Mass, pray for relatives and friends by name, visit or tend a grave, light a candle, or keep a custom your own family has always kept.

There is no single required prayer. Catholics pray for the repose of the dead through the Mass itself, the Lord's Prayer, a cemetery prayer or words of their own, and the Catechism's teaching points to prayer and the Eucharist as the ways the living help the dead. If you would like a set text, your parish can give you the one it uses. For how prayer beads and the image of the skull meet in Catholic devotion, see our story on the skull rosary, and for the wider history, read about skulls in Christianity.

The same date looks different from one country to the next, and each has its own way of keeping it.

In Spain, families visit cemeteries, pray at graves and bring flowers. Because 2 November is usually a workday there and 1 November is a public holiday, the Spanish bishops' conference notes that many people make their cemetery visit on All Saints' Day instead.

In Poland, the Associated Press reported in 2024 that All Saints' Day and the commemoration of the dead bring large family gatherings at cemeteries, where candles and flowers turn graveyards into fields of light for relatives and national heroes. In Italy, the same report describes families visiting cemeteries, lighting candles and placing flowers on graves. In Brazil, 2 November is a traditional religious holiday, and large numbers of people visit cemeteries.

In the Philippines, the AP describes families cleaning graves, leaving flowers and lighting candles around 1 and 2 November. The practice is often called Undas, and it joins Catholic observance with local family custom.

England had its own All Souls' custom, and it came with something to eat. In the practice known as souling, poorer people went from house to house around All Souls' Day and received small cakes in exchange for prayers for the dead. English Heritage quotes a nineteenth-century description of "Soul Mass cakes" given to the poor in Lancashire and Herefordshire.

It was a regional custom from particular counties and periods, not a food every Catholic eats on 2 November. What people eat on All Souls' Day depends on where they live and what their families have done before them.

All Souls' Day and Día de Muertos share their dates and the work of remembering the dead, and in Mexico the two have grown together over centuries. UNESCO describes Día de Muertos as practiced by Indigenous communities in Mexico as a temporary return of deceased relatives, welcomed with flower petals, candles, favorite foods, home altars and gifts left at the cemetery. It also describes the celebration as a fusion of pre-Hispanic religious rites with the Catholic feasts brought to Mexico in the sixteenth century.

Mexico's Secretaría de Cultura places the modern observance within both Indigenous traditions and the Catholic calendar. In some communities, 1 November is associated with children who have died, a custom our story on angelitos describes, and 2 November with adults.

Historians have also looked at how the public celebration took its present form. Historian Elsa Malvido, as summarized in an INAH article on the origin of Día de Muertos, challenged the idea that the holiday is an unchanged survival of an Aztec festival. That article says the November observances reached Mexico in the sixteenth century through Spanish Catholic institutions, and that the public, nationalist form of the celebration was largely reshaped after the Revolution, especially under President Lázaro Cárdenas, from 1934 to 1940.

The link, then, is a shared calendar and a long cultural meeting, not one tradition copied from the other. Home altars, marigolds and pan de muerto are Mexican traditions with their own regional variety; you can read more in our stories on Día de Muertos, how to make an ofrenda, the cempasúchil marigold and pan de muerto. Customs also differ from region to region within Mexico, as our guide to Día de Muertos by region shows, and from one Latin American country to the next. For one community's own way of keeping these nights, read our story on Mixquic's Day of the Dead.

Other Christian churches remember the dead in the same season, each in its own way. The Church of England includes a Eucharist for the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, commonly called All Souls' Day, in its Common Worship resources. Anglican parishes vary: some hold a Requiem, some say prayers for the dead and read the names of those who have died.

Many Lutheran churches fold the remembrance into All Saints. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark explains that medieval Christianity separated All Saints' Day, for martyrs and saints, from All Souls' Day, for commemorating and praying for the dead. Danish Lutherans today keep All Saints' Sunday with services, names read aloud, grave visits and candles.

Eastern Orthodox churches keep their own days for the dead. Instead of 2 November, they observe several Soul Saturdays, including the Saturday before Pentecost and the Saturday before Meatfare Sunday. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America describes these as set occasions for praying for departed Orthodox Christians, and the Orthodox Church in America describes Memorial Saturdays as days to commemorate the departed and give alms in their memory.

In the United States, 2 November is not a holy day of obligation. The US bishops' list of holy days includes 1 November, All Saints' Day, instead, and even that obligation is lifted when 1 November falls on a Saturday or a Monday. Rules differ by country and diocese, so your parish is the place to ask.

Not being required does not make the day quiet. Masses for the dead, cemetery visits and the remembrance of names, described above, are how the Church keeps 2 November, and John Paul II encouraged the faithful to visit graves and pray for their dead.

These come up often in the days around 2 November.

However you keep it, All Souls' Day asks for something small and lasting: a name said aloud, a candle, a visit to a grave, a prayer. For the Mexican celebration that shares its dates, start with our story on Día de Muertos, and for the eve that comes before it all, read about Samhain.

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