But in 2020, the Apostolic Penitentiary issued a decree that extended the availability of certain plenary indulgences amid concerns about avoiding large gatherings of people in churches or cemeteries due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Vatican announced on Oct. 28 that this same decree would also apply in November 2021.
Each year, Pope Francis celebrates Mass for the faithful departed at a different cemetery in Rome or the wider area for the feast of All Souls.
This year, he offered Mass at the French Military Cemetery, where he walked past rows of graves, stopping every so often to pray and to give his blessing.
Pope Francis placed white flowers on some of the graves and paused at tombs to pray in silence before he offered Mass on the cemetery grounds.
In his homily, the pope said that as he walked past the tombs, he noticed one without a name. It said: “Unknown. Died for France, 1944.”
“In the heart of God is the name of all of us, but this is the tragedy of the war,” Pope Francis commented.
The pope said that the tombs should be a “message of peace,” which urge people to stop manufacturing the weapons of war.
“These tombs which speak, cry out … They cry out from within. They cry out: ‘Peace,’” he said.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency’s senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.
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