“There is the disappearance of sinful souls.”
Could Pope Francis have gone the way of controversial former evangelical pastor Rob Bell in declaring there “is no hell?” Well, it depends on who you ask.
During an interview published Wednesday by the well-known liberal Italian newspaper La Repubblica, founder Eugenio Scalfari claimed the pontiff said there “is no hell” — abandoning core Christian doctrine — for those who fail to repent.
The Vatican, though, said Thursday that Francis’ words were taken out of context.
When asked about “bad souls,” the pope reportedly said the souls of unrepentant sinners simply vanish after death and are not subject to eternal damnation, a deviation from scriptural teaching.
“They are not punished. Those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him,” Pope Francis said, according to a translation by Rorate Caeli. “But those who do not repent, and cannot therefore be forgiven, disappear.
“There is no hell,” he allegedly continued. “There is the disappearance of sinful souls.”
Not long after La Repubblica published its story, the Vatican pushed back against the article.
In a statement translated by the Catholic News Agency, the Vatican claimed Scalfari’s story was not a “faithful transcription” of Francis’ words:
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.
The Catholic News Agency also noted that, after publishing a controversial article in 2013, Scalfari admitted he attributed some comments to the pontiff that “were not shared by Pope Francis” himself.
If the pope did actually claim there “is no hell,” it would be an incredible diversion from thousands of years of biblical scholarship and doctrine shared by both Catholic and Protestant denominations.
In his 2011 book “Love Wins,” Bell infamously questioned the existence of hell, transforming his reputation as a popular pastor to a pariah overnight. He claimed Jesus’ love and redemptive work transcends time and, therefore, could be offered to the unrepentant sinner even after her or his death.
Well-known evangelical theologian and preacher John Piper responded at the time by tweeting, “Farewell, Rob Bell.” And Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler described Bell’s book as “theologically disastrous.”
“When you adopt universalism and erase the distinction between the church and the world, then you don’t need the church, and you don’t need Christ, and you don’t need the cross,” he wrote in a 2011 op-ed for The Christian Post. “This is the tragedy of nonjudgmental mainline liberalism, and it’s Rob Bell’s tragedy in this book, too.”
