Hellfire Does Not Exist, Declares Catholic Pope Francis
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The Sovereign of Vatican City and the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis has publicly towed the line of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that a place of eternal torment, known as hellfire, does not exist.
Pope Francis said this in an interview with Italian daily La Repubblica on Thursday.
La Repubblica quoted him as saying: “There is no hell where the souls of sinners suffer in eternity”.
The Pope rather said that “after death, the souls of people who repent are pardoned by God and join in his contemplation”.
Concerning the unrepentant ones, however, he said: “Those who do not repent, therefore, cannot be pardoned, [they] disappear.”
“Hell does not exist; what exists is the disappearance of sinful souls,” he added, but failing to enumerate on what ‘disappearance’ means.
The pope was interviewed by Eugenio Scalfari, 93, a veteran Italian journalist and atheist who regularly muses about faith and religion.
Scalfari regularly enjoys access to the leader of the Catholic Church.
Commenting to the assertion “the disappearance of sinful souls”, an analyst noted that the Pope refused to use the word “die” for the unrepentant souls.
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He, therefore, suggested that the refusal to use the word “die” will unleash a fresh attack on the Church doctrine which outrightly says that “souls are immortal”, i.e. does not and cannot die.
Reacting to the statement by Pope Francis, the Holy See stated that the interview between Pope Francis and Scalfari should not be considered an accurate depiction of Francis’ words, but the author’s own “reconstruction.”
It said the recent meeting between Pope Francis and the journalist was a “private meeting for the occasion of Easter, however without giving him any interview,” the March 29 communique denied.
“What is reported by the author in today’s article is the result of his reconstruction, in which the literal words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted.
No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.”
Scalfari, a self-proclaimed atheist, is the founder and former editor of Italian leftist newspaper La Repubblica.
In an article published on the site March 29, Scalfari claims that Pope Francis told him, “hell doesn’t exist, the disappearance of the souls of sinners exists.”
