Cemetery Sunday in Chicago: Rosary and Prayer Services at 17 Archdiocese Cemeteries for All Saints' and All Souls' Days
At 2 p.m. Sunday, Catholic cemeteries across Cook and Lake counties opened their gates for half-hour outdoor services — and for families carrying a year of losses with them.
Chicago-area Catholics marked the turn of November the way their church has asked them to since 1978: outdoors, among the graves of their own people. Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago hosted Cemetery Sunday rosary and prayer services at 2 p.m. on Sunday at 17 cemetery locations throughout Cook and Lake counties, in observance of All Saints' Day on November 1 and All Souls' Day on November 2, the archdiocese announced.
The services run 30 minutes, with guests welcome to bring their own chairs — seating is not provided — and cemetery personnel on hand to answer questions and help visitors find grave locations, according to the release. Each cemetery also carries a digital booklet sharing the names of those buried there between October 15, 2025 and October 15, 2026, and families can sign a digital memorial remembrance book so a loved one's name and message are remembered in daily prayers through the coming year.
"All Saints' Day invites us to celebrate the holy men and women who have gone before us and whose lives of faith, love and service inspire us to grow closer to God," Bishop Lawrence J. Sullivan, the archdiocese's vicar general, said in the release. "All Souls' Day calls us to remember our loved ones who have died and to hold them in prayer."
The Cook County locations span the map Chicago families actually use: Calvary in Evanston, Mount Olivet and St. Casimir in Chicago, Maryhill and St. Adalbert in Niles, Holy Sepulchre in Alsip, Queen of Heaven in Hillside, Resurrection in Justice and St. Mary in Evergreen Park, among others. Cemetery Sunday itself dates to 1978, when the National Catholic Cemetery Conference proposed setting the first Sunday in November aside to pray for the deceased and visit the graves of loved ones.
