Purgatory, the purification of the soul and the Catholic duty to pray for the faithful departed
The souls in Purgatory have been saved through Christ’s redemption, yet they still await the perfect holiness necessary for the Beatific Vision. Their purification will certainly end, but the Church has always taught that the prayers, sacrifices and good works of the living can bring them relief. The doctrine consequently places obligations upon those who remain. During November, when Catholics remember their departed relations and benefactors, those obligations deserve renewed attention, together with the theology which makes their fulfilment possible.
When the Council of Trent addressed the doctrine of Purgatory in December 1563, its decree included an instruction which is easily overlooked. Having affirmed that the souls undergoing purification are assisted by the prayers and sacrifices of the faithful, particularly the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Council ordered that obligations arising from testamentary foundations and other arrangements made for the departed must be fulfilled diligently and accurately. Priests, ecclesiastical ministers and others responsible for these provisions were expressly warned against negligence. The Fathers were evidently conscious that money might be left, promises undertaken and foundations established for the remembrance of the dead, only for those entrusted with their fulfilment to become careless once the benefactor was no longer present to complain.¹
The decree reveals something about the Catholic understanding of charity which modern Christians may be inclined to overlook. Death does not extinguish every obligation which the living owe to those who have departed. Gratitude towards parents, fidelity to benefactors, promises made to friends and the responsibilities undertaken by those entrusted with pious foundations continue to have their proper force. The person who has died can no longer enquire whether an anniversary Mass has been celebrated or remind his descendants of the prayers they promised to offer. The Church has historically regarded such obligations with particular seriousness because the person concerned may still be receiving their spiritual benefit.
In recent weeks Nuntiatoria has examined the traditional Requiem, the history and devotional use of the De Profundis, and the pastoral questions surrounding deaths which leave families uncertain about the eternal condition of those they love. Those studies considered the Church’s liturgical provision for the departed and the importance of preserving prayer within Catholic households. The doctrine upon which those practices depend deserves fuller examination. What happens to the soul which dies reconciled to God but imperfectly purified? How can prayers offered after death benefit someone whose particular judgement has already taken place? And what obligations arise from that possibility, beyond the understandable human desire to honour the memory of those who have died?²
Catholic teaching begins with the particular judgement, which takes place immediately after death and determines the soul’s eternal destiny. Those who die in mortal sin without repentance are lost. Those who die in sanctifying grace are saved, although some require further purification before entering Heaven. Purgatory concerns this latter condition exclusively. Every soul undergoing it belongs to the redeemed and will certainly attain the Beatific Vision, the direct and immediate knowledge of God which constitutes the essential happiness of Heaven. There is no uncertainty about its final salvation, no subsequent opportunity to reject God, and no possibility of passing from Purgatory into the Hell of the damned. Equally, the Church does not teach that every saved soul must undergo Purgatory. Those who depart this life already perfectly purified enter Heaven without delay.³
The Second Council of Lyons in 1274 and the Council of Florence in 1439 taught that souls departing in genuine repentance and the charity of God, but without having made sufficient satisfaction for their sins, undergo purification after death. They also affirmed that the suffrages of the faithful, particularly the Sacrifice of the Mass, prayers, almsgiving and other pious works, bring them assistance. Trent subsequently reaffirmed these principles against the denials and uncertainties associated with the Reformation. The definitions establish the existence of Purgatory, the condition of those who undergo it and the efficacy of the Church’s intercession. They do not provide a description of its physical location, the precise character of its sufferings or the duration experienced by individual souls. These matters have occasioned considerable theological discussion, but they must be distinguished from the substance of the dogma.⁴
The necessity of purification arises from the distinction between the forgiveness of sin and the removal of everything which sin has caused. A person may receive absolution and be restored to God’s friendship while retaining disordered affections, habitual weaknesses and an obligation to make satisfaction for offences already pardoned. Catholic theology distinguishes the culpa, or guilt of sin, from the poena, or punishment consequent upon it. When mortal sin is forgiven, its eternal punishment is remitted; temporal punishment may nevertheless remain. The word temporal here distinguishes punishment which comes to an end from punishment which is everlasting. It does not imply that Purgatory can be measured according to the passage of earthly days and years.
The distinction is readily understood in ordinary moral experience. A man who has stolen another’s property may genuinely repent, confess his offence and receive absolution, while remaining obliged to restore what he has taken. Someone who has destroyed another person’s reputation through slander may be forgiven without thereby having repaired the injury. Such examples concern the obligations of justice which survive the forgiveness of guilt. There is also a more inward consequence. Habits of pride, envy, self-indulgence or resentment do not necessarily disappear with the absolution of a particular sin. The Christian must continue cooperating with grace, seeking the healing of his soul through prayer, penance, the reception of the sacraments and the patient acceptance of life’s trials.
These earthly examples cannot exhaust the supernatural meaning of purgatorial satisfaction, since the punishments of Purgatory are imposed and ordered by divine justice. They do, however, expose the inadequacy of supposing that forgiveness must always remove every consequence of wrongdoing. Scripture itself provides instances in which God pardons an offence while allowing punishment to remain. After David acknowledges his sin, Nathan declares that the Lord has taken it away, yet announces the grievous consequences which will follow. The Council of Trent’s decree on Justification similarly rejects the proposition that the remission of guilt invariably extinguishes all temporal punishment. God’s mercy restores the sinner to His friendship; His justice does not thereby become indifferent to the disorder which sin has introduced.⁵
The purification required for Heaven reaches beyond the correction of individual habits. Man was created for union with the infinitely holy God, and the blessed must possess the holiness necessary for that supernatural destiny. St John writes that nothing defiled shall enter the heavenly Jerusalem, while the Epistle to the Hebrews declares that without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Such passages establish the necessity of perfect purification, although they do not by themselves explain how it is accomplished after death. Purgatory concerns those who die possessing charity but who have not yet reached the perfection which the presence of God requires. The salvation which Christ has obtained for them is secure; its final application involves their complete deliverance from everything incompatible with heavenly glory.
Christ’s redemption is infinitely sufficient. The grace by which a sinner is forgiven, the satisfaction through which the consequences of sin are remedied, and the final purification of the redeemed all depend upon His merits. Catholic doctrine has never taught that a soul purchases entrance into Heaven through suffering independently of the Redeemer. The satisfaction offered by Christ is complete, while its application to individual souls takes place according to the order established by divine wisdom. This distinction between redemption accomplished and redemption applied is indispensable to understanding Purgatory. The continuing effects of sin after forgiveness do not imply any deficiency in the Sacrifice of Calvary.
The biblical evidence for prayer on behalf of the departed is particularly explicit in the Second Book of Machabees. Following a battle, Judas Machabeus discovered that some of his fallen soldiers had been carrying objects associated with pagan worship. Recognising the offence, he organised prayer and sent a collection to Jerusalem so that sacrifice might be offered for their sins. The sacred writer explains that this action arose from belief in the resurrection and concludes: “It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.” The passage presents intercession for the departed as a religiously commendable act capable of benefiting those for whom it is offered. Although it does not employ the later theological terminology of Purgatory, the practice described presupposes that death has not necessarily removed every possibility of receiving assistance through the prayers of the living.⁶
The Book of Ecclesiasticus provides another expression of the obligation to remember those who have died. Amid instructions concerning duties towards parents, priests, the poor and the afflicted, it declares: “A gift hath grace in the sight of all the living, and restrain not grace from the dead.” The traditional Douay–Rheims commentary associates this injunction with alms, prayers and sacrifices offered on behalf of the departed. Its setting is significant. Care for the dead appears among the ordinary obligations of a religious life, alongside duties towards those who remain visibly among us. The Christian who has learned to honour his parents, provide for the needy and assist the suffering has reason to regard the grave as no barrier to the exercise of charity.⁷
St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians introduces the image of judgement by fire. The Apostle describes men building upon the foundation which is Christ, their works being tested to reveal their true character. Some works endure; others are consumed. Of the man whose work is destroyed, St Paul writes: “he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.” Catholic theologians have long understood this passage as consistent with the purification of one who is saved but must nevertheless suffer loss. The immediate context concerns the quality of work undertaken upon Christ’s foundation, and it would be careless to claim that every detail supplies a literal description of Purgatory. Its importance lies in the distinction between suffering loss and losing salvation, a distinction consonant with the doctrine subsequently defined by the Church.⁸
The earliest Christian evidence is particularly instructive because the practice of praying for the departed appears before the theological disputes of the Middle Ages. Tertullian, writing in the early third century, refers to offerings made for the dead on the anniversaries of their deaths. Whatever difficulties attend his later ecclesiastical position, his testimony concerning an existing Christian custom possesses independent historical value. By the fourth century, St Cyril of Jerusalem was explaining the Eucharistic commemoration of the departed to newly baptised Christians. He distinguished the invocation of the saints from prayer for deceased members of the faithful, teaching that those remembered during the Holy Sacrifice received considerable benefit. St John Chrysostom expressed the same conviction in his preaching, associating the Church’s commemoration at the altar with prayers and almsgiving undertaken for the departed.⁹
These witnesses require neither exaggeration nor apology. The Fathers did not employ every distinction subsequently developed by the scholastic theologians, and Christian writers differed over particular features of the intermediate state. Their testimony establishes that prayer and Eucharistic sacrifice for the departed belonged to Christian worship long before the councils of Lyons, Florence and Trent. The Church’s dogmatic definitions were concerned with explaining and defending an inherited belief whose practical expression was already deeply established. To describe Purgatory simply as a medieval invention is therefore to disregard the religious practice from which its theological formulation developed.
The severity and character of purgatorial suffering have occupied theologians for centuries. The scholastic tradition commonly distinguishes the temporary deprivation of the Beatific Vision from the positive punishment associated with purification. The first is described as the poena damni, the pain arising from being deprived of the vision of God; the second as the poena sensus, or positive suffering. These terms require explanation lest the sufferings of the Holy Souls be confused with those of the damned. The separation from the Beatific Vision in Purgatory is temporary and accompanied by absolute certainty of eventual union with God. The damned suffer eternal exclusion from Him through their definitive rejection of His friendship. The Holy Souls retain charity and belong irrevocably to God. Their longing for the divine vision arises from the very love which unites them to Him.¹⁰
St Catherine of Genoa offers an especially valuable contribution to this question. Born in 1447, Catherine underwent a profound conversion in 1473 and subsequently devoted much of her life to the service of the sick at the hospital of Pammatone in Genoa. Her spiritual experience gave rise to the writings associated with her name, including the Treatise on Purgatory, published after her death in the collection of 1551. The text was transmitted through those who knew her, its final literary form owing something to her confessor, Fr Cattaneo Marabotto, and her spiritual circle. It is therefore best approached as a witness to her spiritual teaching rather than as a transcription of an independently authenticated revelation concerning the circumstances of the next world.¹¹
Catherine understood the soul’s purification in relation to its growing knowledge of God’s holiness and its desire for perfect union with Him. She compared the remaining effects of sin to rust which prevents a surface from reflecting the light of the sun. As the obstruction is consumed, the soul becomes increasingly receptive to divine light. The image conveys the painful removal of everything which impedes perfect charity. It also explains the seemingly paradoxical insistence in her Treatise that the Holy Souls experience an extraordinary peace and contentment even amid severe suffering. Their wills are wholly conformed to the divine will. They desire the purification which God requires because they recognise its necessity and love the justice by which it is accomplished.¹²
A sick man may willingly submit to painful treatment because he knows that it is necessary for his recovery. His consent does not abolish the pain, but it changes his relation to what he must endure. Catherine’s account attributes to the Holy Souls a far more complete conformity to God, together with a recognition of the perfect goodness of His judgement. Their suffering is neither the despair of the damned nor the resentment of those who regard themselves as unjustly treated. Yet they do not already enjoy the Beatific Vision. Their certainty of possessing God, joined to the necessity of awaiting the removal of every impediment to that possession, helps explain the coexistence of suffering and peace within their condition.
Pope Benedict XVI, discussing Catherine’s teaching in January 2011, observed that she had not received particular revelations describing the souls in Purgatory. Her understanding proceeded from her own experience of purification through divine love. He also recognised the originality of her approach, which did not depend upon imagining a region beneath the earth populated by suffering spirits. This is an important distinction for Catholics familiar with devotional accounts of flames, prisons and measured periods of punishment. Such imagery belongs to a long theological and spiritual tradition, but its details do not possess the authority of the Church’s dogmatic definitions. The reality of purgatorial punishment must be affirmed without pretending to know everything about the manner in which it is experienced.¹³
Trent was concerned about precisely this danger. It directed bishops to prevent uncertain and excessively speculative questions from being introduced into popular preaching, and to prohibit practices associated with superstition or financial exploitation. There is nothing irreverent in acknowledging the limits of theological knowledge. Nor does caution concerning private revelations require us to dismiss the severe language employed by saints and doctors when describing purification. The Church has affirmed both the necessity of purgatorial suffering and the spiritual benefit of suffrages. What she has withheld is an authoritative account of its physical circumstances. The popular habit of assigning definite numbers of years to particular faults, or treating indulgences as though they removed precisely calculated periods from a sentence in Purgatory, goes beyond what can be known. Older indulgence measurements expressed an analogy with ecclesiastical penance, not a revelation concerning the duration of punishment after death.¹⁴
The efficacy of prayer for the Holy Souls raises a further theological difficulty. Their particular judgement has already occurred, and the period of earthly probation has ended. They cannot acquire fresh merit through acts of repentance and penance as living Christians can. Neither can the prayers of others transform an eternally condemned soul into one of the redeemed. How, then, can intercession make any difference to those whose everlasting destiny is fixed?
St Thomas Aquinas examines this question at length in the Supplement to the Summa Theologiae, particularly Question 71, concerning suffrages for the dead. His reasoning depends upon the supernatural communion established among the members of Christ’s Mystical Body. The charity which unites Christians does not cease to operate because one of them has died. Works undertaken by one member may benefit another through prayer and satisfaction, according to the order established by God. The living cannot acquire eternal salvation on behalf of someone who has definitively rejected it, but they may assist souls already reconciled to God in the satisfaction which remains to be accomplished. Such assistance does not alter the judgement which determined their salvation; it concerns the purification required before they enter heavenly glory.¹⁵
There is no difficulty here which requires us to suppose that God changes His mind in response to information supplied by our prayers. Divine Providence has eternally known and ordered the freely offered intercessions through which He wills to bestow particular benefits. A mother praying for her son does not inform God of a need which He had overlooked. Her prayer belongs to the means through which His providence may accomplish the good He has ordained. The same principle applies to the departed, although the effects are different because their eternal state has already been determined. Their purification remains subject to the wisdom and mercy of God, who has nevertheless given the Church reason to believe that her prayers and sacrifices can bring them relief.
St Thomas also distinguishes between general suffrages offered for all the faithful departed and those applied particularly to an individual. The charity of the Church embraces all her members, and its common prayers are genuinely beneficial. Nevertheless, the intention by which a work of satisfaction is directed towards a particular soul possesses its own significance. This is why Catholics have traditionally requested Masses for named persons and remembered the anniversaries of their deaths, even while participating in the general intercessions of the Church. A particular Mass intention is more than a ceremonial mention of the deceased. It directs the priest’s ministerial application of the Sacrifice towards the intention entrusted to him, while the general fruits of the Mass remain available according to God’s providence.¹⁶
The pre-eminence assigned to the Mass follows from its identity with the Sacrifice of Calvary, made sacramentally present upon the altar. Christ offered Himself once for all, and the Church possesses no other sacrifice independent of that redemptive offering. The Council of Trent taught that the Mass is truly propitiatory and may be offered for the living and the dead. Its efficacy derives from the merits of Christ rather than from the sanctity of the priest or the worthiness of the person requesting the intention. This is why the Requiem has always occupied the principal place among suffrages, and why the Church has encouraged the celebration of Masses for deceased relatives, benefactors and members of the faithful who might otherwise be forgotten.¹⁷
The infinite value of the Sacrifice must nevertheless be distinguished from the particular application of its fruits. God’s goodness cannot be measured according to the number of Masses requested or the amount of money offered. The Church’s discipline concerning stipends protects the separation between a customary contribution towards the priest’s support and the spiritual benefit sought through his celebration. The tradition of Gregorian Masses, thirty Masses celebrated on consecutive days for the repose of one departed soul, illustrates the seriousness with which Catholics have approached sustained intercession. Its origin is associated with an account preserved by St Gregory the Great in the fourth book of his Dialogues, chapter 55 in the traditional English translation. Gregory relates how, after thirty Masses had been offered for a deceased monk named Justus, the monk appeared to his brother to announce his deliverance from suffering. The account gave rise to a custom of considerable antiquity and devotional authority. It does not constitute a dogmatic guarantee that every soul for whom the series is offered must be released from Purgatory upon the thirtieth celebration. The efficacy of every Mass is certain as the Sacrifice of Christ; the precise application of its fruits to a particular soul remains subject to divine wisdom.¹⁸
Alongside the Mass, the Church has always encouraged prayers, almsgiving, fasting and other works of charity offered for the departed. Such practices possess their efficacy through union with Christ and the supernatural communion of His members. They are especially important for those who cannot arrange a Mass immediately or who possess few material resources. The poor widow who recites the De Profundis for her husband is not prevented by her poverty from exercising a genuine work of mercy. Neither should the practice of almsgiving in suffrage be neglected. A gift to someone in distress, offered with the intention of assisting a departed soul, unites charity towards the living with intercession for the dead. The Church’s indulgences provide another means of assistance, subject to their prescribed conditions and applicable to the departed by way of suffrage. They must never be treated as spiritual commodities which can be bought, accumulated or assigned independently of the Church’s discipline.¹⁹
These theological distinctions are indispensable when considering the moral obligation to pray for the Holy Souls. Charity is its most obvious foundation. A Christian who has loved another person during life has no reason to cease seeking his spiritual good after death, when prayer and sacrifice may be the only assistance still available. Yet charity is not the whole of the matter. Justice, gratitude and fidelity to promises may impose particular obligations upon us. Children owe honour to their parents, and the Fourth Commandment does not cease to possess moral significance when those parents die. The sacrifices by which parents sustained their children, the instruction they provided and the care they bestowed create obligations of gratitude which may properly be discharged through prayer for their souls.
The same principle applies, according to the circumstances, to those from whom we have received spiritual or material benefits. A priest who baptised us, a teacher who instructed us in the Faith, a benefactor who assisted us in adversity, or a friend whose generosity sustained our household has conferred a good which death cannot retrospectively cancel. We may have had little opportunity to repay such kindness during their lives. To remember them in prayer, particularly through the Holy Sacrifice, is an appropriate expression of gratitude. Where an explicit promise has been made to arrange Masses or other suffrages, the obligation becomes more particular. A person who undertakes to have a Requiem offered ought to ensure that it is actually celebrated. Those responsible for testamentary gifts intended to secure Masses have an additional duty to honour the terms of the arrangement according to the applicable law and ecclesiastical discipline. This was the practical concern which Trent addressed with such care.
An obligation to pray for a deceased person does not require us to presume upon his eternal condition. As our earlier article The Dead We Dare Not Judge explained, the circumstances of a death may raise grave questions without supplying a certain answer concerning the deceased’s particular judgement. Personal prayers may be offered for those whose eternal state is unknown, entrusting them to God’s mercy without declaring that they have been saved. The Church’s public funeral rites and the celebration of Masses for particular persons have historically been governed by additional disciplinary requirements. Under the older canonical discipline, distinctions were maintained between private application of the Mass and public liturgical honours which might imply ecclesiastical communion. Later Roman provisions, including the decree of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued in June 1976, expressly distinguished private Masses for deceased Christians outside full Catholic communion from public celebrations, for which particular conditions were prescribed. Such distinctions protect the Church’s visible profession of faith while leaving proper scope for intercession. No Catholic need abandon prayer for a relative merely because the circumstances of his death are painful or uncertain. Equally, prayer must never become a pretext for contradicting what the Church teaches about judgement, repentance and the necessity of grace.²⁰
The obligation to remember the departed extends beyond those whose names we know. Many souls have passed from this world without descendants, while others belonged to families in which the Catholic practice of praying for the dead has disappeared. The Church’s general suffrages embrace them, but there is good reason for individual Catholics to include among their intentions those who have nobody to remember them. The elderly who died alone, the poor whose graves remain unmarked, priests and religious whose communities have disappeared, and generations of ordinary faithful whose names have vanished from family memory may all be commended to Almighty God. Their need, if they remain in Purgatory, is no less real because no living relation is aware of it. A Mass offered for the forgotten dead expresses a charity freed from the immediate interests of personal affection.
The historical development of chantries, confraternities and foundations for perpetual prayer arose from this conviction. In medieval England, benefactors endowed altars, appointed chaplains and left provisions for the remembrance of their souls. The dissolution of religious houses and suppression of chantries under the Tudor religious changes consequently involved much more than the destruction or redistribution of ecclesiastical property. It brought to an end countless arrangements established by generations of Catholics for continuing intercession. Whatever abuses attended particular institutions, and they certainly required correction where they occurred, their original purpose rested upon an intelligible theological and moral principle. The dead retained a claim upon the charity of the living, and the living had undertaken responsibilities which were intended to endure beyond their own lifetimes.²¹
Within the Old Roman Apostolate, the Guild of Holy Souls seeks to preserve this principle in a practical form. Its foundation was approved in November 2022 by the Titular Archbishop of Selsey, and the original statement published on 21 November established two related purposes: the encouragement of prayer for the faithful departed and assistance for Old Romans seeking traditional Catholic burial. The arrangements described include monthly gatherings for prayer and Requiem Masses, Chantry Books recording the names of deceased members according to their month of death, and local provision for practical assistance towards funeral and burial expenses where resources permit. The Guild thus unites the spiritual work of mercy of praying for the dead with the corporal work of burying them. Its foundation belongs to the continuing pastoral responsibility of the Apostolate towards those who have received the sacraments and remained attached to its missions and oratories.²²
November provides a particularly appropriate occasion for renewing these obligations, although the Church’s prayers for the departed are never confined to a single month. The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed on 2 November, the traditional Office of the Dead, the Requiem Mass and the indulgenced practices associated with cemetery visits all direct attention towards the Holy Souls. In the older Roman liturgical tradition, the juxtaposition of All Saints with All Souls preserves a particularly clear expression of the Communion of Saints. Those who have attained glory are honoured, while those whose salvation is certain but whose purification remains incomplete are assisted through prayer.
In August 1915, with the First World War already exacting an appalling toll, Pope Benedict XV extended to all priests the privilege of celebrating three Masses on All Souls’ Day. His Apostolic Constitution Incruentum altaris expressly referred to the interruption and neglect of foundations established for Masses for the dead, as well as the extraordinary number of men dying in the war. The Pope was concerned that souls should not be deprived of suffrages through the destruction of charitable provision, reduced resources or negligence. Of the three Masses permitted, one could be offered for an intention chosen by the priest, while the other two were to be applied respectively for all the faithful departed and for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. Benedict’s intervention arose from circumstances in which the ordinary mechanisms of remembrance had been disrupted. It was a practical application of the same principle which had concerned the Fathers of Trent more than three centuries earlier.²³
Catholic households can make this doctrine a familiar part of ordinary life without elaborate arrangements. The names of departed relatives may be preserved in a family book, their anniversaries marked by prayers and Mass intentions, and their graves visited with reverence. Children should learn to pray for their deceased relations and understand why the Church continues to offer sacrifices on their behalf. As Nuntiatoria’s recent Domestic Church guidance has explained, the submission of a name to a Chantry Book or general remembrance list should not automatically be confused with the request for a distinct Mass intention. Both are valuable, but the latter should be arranged expressly where it is desired. Those who cannot afford a customary offering should never imagine that the Church’s charity is reserved for families possessing sufficient means. Prayer belongs to every member of the faithful, and the fruits of Christ’s redemption are beyond purchase.²⁴
There is, finally, a lesson concerning our own preparation for death which cannot reasonably be separated from the duty of praying for others. The certainty that God may complete the purification of those who die in His grace gives no licence to neglect sanctification during this life. St Augustine warned that the suffrages of the living cannot be relied upon to confer after death what a person has culpably refused while alive. The period of earthly probation ends with death. We possess now the opportunity to confess our sins, repair injuries, reconcile ourselves with others, perform works of penance and grow in the charity by which we shall ultimately be judged. The spiritual assistance of others may benefit us after death, but no one should presume upon it as an alternative to responding faithfully to grace.²⁵
The Holy Souls have attained the one thing upon which eternal happiness depends: they have died in God’s friendship. Their sufferings are real, but their final union with Him is beyond doubt. St Catherine’s account of their conformity to the divine will reminds us that purification belongs to the fulfilment of salvation. The Christian who prays for them participates in a work whose ultimate purpose is certain, while remaining unable to determine the precise assistance afforded to any individual soul. That uncertainty gives good reason for perseverance in prayer.
Trent’s concern for the faithful execution of obligations towards the departed remains as reasonable today as it was in the sixteenth century. A promised Mass should be arranged, an entrusted intention remembered and the names of deceased benefactors preserved where possible. The gradual disappearance of a family or religious community ought not to mean that its dead are deliberately abandoned. Where particular obligations no longer survive, the Church’s general intercession continues, and the faithful may extend their own charity towards those whose earthly remembrance has ceased.
We cannot accompany our departed relations into the particular judgement or undertake their purification in their place. We can offer for them the prayers and good works which the Church has commended, and above all unite our intentions with the Sacrifice of Christ upon the altar. Their inability ordinarily to seek our assistance makes the responsibility more deserving of attention, while the certainty of their salvation, where they are among the Holy Souls, gives confidence to our supplications.
The remembrance of the departed should consequently endure after the funeral, after the customary period of mourning and after the generation which knew them has itself passed away. We have inherited prayers offered for centuries by Catholics whose names have largely disappeared from history. Those who follow us will inherit, among other things, the example we give of fidelity towards the dead. Whether they remember us at the altar may depend in some measure upon whether we have taught them to remember others.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis.
- Council of Trent, Session XXV, Decree Concerning Purgatory, 3–4 December 1563.
- Nuntiatoria, “Requiem Aeternam: The Church That Will Not Forget Her Dead”, 30 October 2026; “De Profundis: The Prayer That Will Not Leave the Dead Behind”, 1 November 2026; “The Dead We Dare Not Judge”, 30 October 2026.
- Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus, 29 January 1336; Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§1021–1032.
- Second Council of Lyons, Profession of Faith of Michael Palaeologus, 1274; Eugenius IV, Laetentur caeli, Council of Florence, Session VI, 6 July 1439; Council of Trent, Session XXV, Decree Concerning Purgatory.
- Council of Trent, Session VI, Decree on Justification, chapter XIV and canon 30, 13 January 1547; Douay–Rheims Bible, 2 Kings 12:13–14.
- Douay–Rheims Bible, 2 Machabees 12:38–46.
- Douay–Rheims Bible, Ecclesiasticus 7:37.
- Douay–Rheims Bible, 1 Corinthians 3:11–15; Hebrews 12:14; Apocalypse 21:27.
- Tertullian, De Corona, chapter III; St Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis V, §§8–10; St John Chrysostom, Homily III on Philippians.
- St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, qq. 70–71; Catholic Encyclopedia, “Purgatory”.
- Benedict XVI, General Audience, “Saint Catherine of Genoa”, 12 January 2011.
- St Catherine of Genoa, Treatise on Purgatory, chapter II.
- Benedict XVI, General Audience, “Saint Catherine of Genoa”, 12 January 2011.
- Council of Trent, Session XXV, Decree Concerning Purgatory; Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§1471–1479.
- St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, q. 71, articles 1–2 and 6.
- St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, q. 71, articles 9 and 12–14.
- Council of Trent, Session XXII, Doctrine on the Sacrifice of the Mass, chapter II and canon 3, 17 September 1562.
- St Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Book IV, chapter 55.
- St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, q. 71, articles 9–10; Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§1471–1479.
- Nuntiatoria, “The Dead We Dare Not Judge”, 30 October 2026; Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Decree Regarding Public Celebration of Mass for Other Christians Who Have Died, 11 June 1976.
- Historic England, “Can You Purchase Paradise?”.
- Old Roman Apostolate, “Guild of Holy Souls”, 21 November 2022.
- Benedict XV, Incruentum altaris, 10 August 1915, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, VII, pp. 401–404.
- Nuntiatoria, “The Domestic Church: 1–8 November 2026”, 30 October 2026; Old Roman Apostolate, “Guild of Holy Souls”, 21 November 2022.
- St Augustine, Enchiridion, chapter 110; St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, q. 71, articles 2 and 6.
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