Catholics attend Mass, visit the tombs and graves of family and friends
Catholics across the New Orleans area attended Mass and visited cemeteries, a longtime local tradition, on All Saints Day, a "Holy Day of Obligation" for Catholics.
"All Saints Day is a great feast in the Church. We call it a holy day, where we're asked to be at Mass and to celebrate the Eucharist," says Archbishop Gregory Aymond.
"All Saints Day is an opportunity to celebrate first of all the big-name saints. Even though each of the big-name saints have their own feast day, we celebrate a feast of all of them, together, as the saints," Aymond said.
Besides attending Mass, many Catholics visited cemeteries to clean and decorate the family tomb.
Priests led processions through them, blessing the tombs and sprinkling holy water.
The archbishop blessed the graves at St. Louis Cemetery No. 3.
