Catholics Pray for Dead to Shorten Time in 'Purgatory'
Roman Catholics worldwide observed All Saints Day on Tuesday and All Souls Day on Wednesday, days on the liturgical calendar set aside to remember deceased loved ones—to visit their graves and to pray for their time to be shortened in what Catholics believe is a place called Purgatory.
“Part of the Church’s teachings, when you pray for the dead and go to the cemetery, you actually gain indulgence. There’s indulgence when you pray for the person who died,” Roy Bellen, head of the Archdiocese of Manila’s Archdiocesan Office of Communications, told the Philippine Inquirer this week.
An indulgence is defined as an “extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in God’s justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the Church in the exercise of the power of the keys.” Catholics believe that not all those saved go directly to Heaven upon death, but some are held...