ALL SOULS DAY–B (I)

The setting aside of a particular day for praying not for certain named individuals but for whole classes of the departed or for the dead in general cannot be traced to the earliest Christian centuries, but was well established by the end of the first millennium. Prayers for the deceased members of Benedictine monasteries were offered in the week after Pentecost and the practice of praying for the dead at a date near Pentecost was also followed in Spain in the 7th century.