When Victoria Romero, 6, dressed up as a witch for a Hallowe’en party this week she could hardly have imagined that she was provoking the wrath of God by attending a celebration akin to a Black Mass — at least in the eyes of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain.

Wearing skeleton suits, dressing up as vampires, witches or goblins or slapping on fake blood is not far removed from communing with the Devil, according to the country’s bishops.

However, the bishops, with Vatican backing, have reserved their venom for the millions of parents who allowed their children to celebrate this “pagan” festival.

Father Joan María Canals, the director of the Spanish Bishops Conference Committee on Liturgy, condemned parents for permitting their children to go to “un-Christian” parties when they should be focusing on All Saints Day today and All Souls Day on Monday.

His views were endorsed yesterday by L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, which reported his views under the headline “Hallowe’en’s dangerous messages”.

It quoted him as saying: “Hallowe’en has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian.” Parents should “be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death”, he said.

L’Osservatore Romano praised a church at Alcalá de Henares, east of Madrid, that has decided to hold a prayer vigil tonight and the Paris archdiocese’s idea of having children play a lucky dip dubbed “Holywins” instead.

“Children dress as witches, vampires, ghosts, masks, corpses, skeletons, and parents favour this type of festivity which plays with elements of death,” Father Canals said. “But when a relative dies they prevent them from seeing the dead relative.”

José Sánchez González, the Bishop of Sigüenza-Guadalajara, in central Spain, went further, suggesting that Hallowe’en parties had a “background of the occult and anti-Christianity”. He said that he saw the dark influence of Hollywood playing with the young minds of Spanish children as they danced innocently around pumpkins, little realising that they were attending a pagan festival.

“Due to this influence, Hallowe’en started being celebrated several years ago and it is spreading more and more, without people knowing what it is that they are celebrating,” he said.

The popularity of Hallowe’en has grown in Spain in recent years as the country has gone from being a bastion of Roman Catholicism to a more secular society.

While more than 77 per cent of Spaniards define themselves as Catholics, only 16 per cent attend Mass regularly, according to a 2007 survey for the Centre for Sociological Research. All Saints Day was moved by the Church ten centuries ago from its original date in May to deflect public attention from pagan autumn festivals.

The Vatican appeared previously to take a more lenient position. Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, once said: “If English and American children like to dress up as witches and devils on one night of the year, that’s not a problem. If it is just a game, there is no harm.”

In Britain the Christian organisation Saltbox, based in Staffordshire, has distributed 150,000 leaflets across the county this year to counter the popularity of trick-or-treating.

“It’s not a safe practice,” said the chief executive Lloyd Cooke. “It allows children to put themselves in danger and increases fear among older people.”

Mr Cooke said that Hallowe’en encouraged children to wander the streets unsupervised. Among adults, he said, it encouraged practices that countered scripture, causing people to “dabble in the occult” with tarot cards and ouija boards that “injure them psychologically”.

A history of Hallowe'en

• The Celts wore costumes made from animal heads and built large fires to celebrate their new year, which fell on November 1. New Year’s Eve on October 31 was known as Samhain (pronounced “sow-in”) and marked the end of the “season of the Sun” (summer) and the beginning of “the season of darkness and cold”( winter). Although this 2,000-year-old version of Hallowe’en did not include trick or treating, it was far from dull.

• The Celts would burn crops and animals as offerings to their gods. Before the celebration, the ancient people would extinguish all fires other than the central bonfire, and scare each other with fortune-telling and prophesying

• The Romans later adapted this festival of the dead to honour the goddess of fruits and trees, Pomona. This is the most likely reason why, on Hallowe’en, we still bob for apples

• In the year AD835 the Roman Catholic Church made November 1 a holiday to honour all the saints. Although it was a joyous holiday, it was also the eve of All Souls Day, or All Hallows, so in medieval times it became customary to pray for the dead on this date

• Hallowe’en’s modern popularity can be attributed to the Americans. Because the celebration was largely free of any religious connections, it was quickly embraced by a broad swath of immigrants in the second half of the 19th century. Today Americans spend an estimated $6.9 billion (£4.2 billion) on Hallowe’en each year