Does The Pope Believe In Hell and the Devil?

by Admin · Published July 9, 2024 · Updated July 9, 2024

(Photo: CNS/Lola Gomez)

Question: Recently Pope Francis said that he hopes that hell is empty. Does that mean he believes every human being, even the worst, has been saved and is in heaven? Does the pope actually believe in the devil?

Answer: The short answers: No, he doesn’t, and yes, he does. In January, Pope Francis said in an interview: “I like to think that hell is empty; I hope it is.” He specifically prefaced this by saying that he was not expressing any dogma.

As so often, the Holy Father’s words were misreported (“Pope declares hell is empty!”) and twisted, creating social media outrage from the anti-Francis lobby especially.

But what the pope expressed should be each Christian’s hope: that every person, even those who lived the most iniquitous lives, made things right with God to attain the grace of salvation. Only cruel people would hope that hell is filled to capacity (as opposed to supposing that it is).

Of course, the pope knows that Jesus warned that those who decline God’s invitation to repent will perish (cf. Luke 13:5). Yet, repentance is possible, and salvation available, until the very last moments of our earthly lives. The pope is simply expressing the hope that all sinners — that is, everybody ever — took advantage of God’s generous offer, and perhaps also that God extended his ineffable mercy to those who did not know it was available.

Going deeper: by hoping that hell is empty, Pope Francis leaves the task of deciding who qualifies for heaven up to God, who is Mercy. Our task is to make sure that we do not test God by presenting ourselves to him filled with sin, and therefore we must live accordingly, as the Church urges us to. It is not our job to counsel God on how to judge others. God alone is in charge.

To your second question: Pope Francis has stressed the existence of the devil more than most of his modern predecessors. In his 2018 encyclical Gaudete et Exultate, he wrote: “We should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea. This mistake would lead us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable.”

In 2014 he warned: “Watch out — the devil exists! The devil exists even in the 21st century. And we must not be naïve. We must learn from the Gospel how to battle against him.”

The 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire once said: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he did not exist.” The devil seems to have succeeded in his deception.

The devil might not be the ugly figure of popular imagination — a hideous horned man with hooves, holding a pitchfork and surrounded by flames — and we may picture him in various ways, but the Catholic teaching is that the devil is real and always at work to corrupt us, as Pope Francis has often and forcefully reiterated.

Published in the May 2024 issue of The Southern Cross magazine