Feast of the Guardian Angels

Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels
Ángel de la Guarda
Observed by	Catholic Church
Date	2 October
Next time	2 October 2017 (2017-10-02)
Frequency	annual

The Memorial of the Holy Guardian Angels is a memorial of the Catholic Church officially observed on 2 October. In some places, the feast is observed on the first Sunday in September with the permission of the Congregation for Divine Worship. Catholics set up altars in honor of guardian angels as early as the 4th Century, and local celebrations of a feast in honor of guardian angels go back to the 11th Century. The feast is also observed by some Anglo-Catholics within the Anglican Communion and most churches of the Continuing Anglican movement.

Devotion to the angels is an ancient tradition which the Christian Church inherited from Judaism. It began to develop with the birth of the monastic tradition. The feast was first kept by the Franciscan order in 1500. This feast, like many others, was local before it was placed in the General Roman Calendar in 1607 by Pope Paul V. The papal decree establishing the feast was cosigned by Robert Bellarmine, which has led some scholars to speculate that the feast was created under the influence of the Society of Jesus. It was originally ranked as a double, and is believed that the new feast was intended to be a kind of supplement to the Feast of St. Michael, since the Church honoured on that day (29 September) the memory of all the angels as well as the memory of St. Michael. Clement X elevated it to the rank of an obligatory double, and, finally, Leo XIII raised the feast to the rank of a double major. Since 1976, it has been ranked an obligatory memorial.