The Vatican has rejected media articles claiming that Pope Francis does not believe in hell.
The Pope is said to have claimed in an interview with editor of La Repubblica Eugenio Scalfari that hell did not exist.
The article by the leading liberal Italian newspaper “It is an honor to be called a revolutionary,” said the Pope remarked that “good souls” who sought repentance from God would receive it and then was asked, “What about the bad souls?”
The Pope was reported to have said that souls of sinners would vanish after death, and would not face any eternal punishment.
“They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear,” Pope Francis was quoted to have said by the Catholic blog Rorate Caeli.
The Pope said further that “There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”
But the Vatican is reported by the Catholic News Agency to have said that “What is reported by the author 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”.
The Catholic New Agency said the author of the article Scalfari had in previous years misquoted the Pope in other articles.
Source: Africafeeds.com
