Last year, an interviewer asked Francis how he envisages hell. His response stayed with me: “It’s difficult to imagine it. What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought: I like to think hell is empty; I hope it is.”
Yes - I think it caught my attention because it was such a mystery. It was a welcome thing to hear from one of the most powerful people in the world, but it came like a bolt from the blue. As far as I know, he never revisited the topic.