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Pope Francis has died

(www.reuters.com)
916 points phillipharris | 6 comments | 21 Apr 25 08:00 UTC | HN request time: 1.209s | source | bottom
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fleabitdev ◴[21 Apr 25 09:42 UTC] No.43750020[source]▶
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.”
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1. russfink ◴[21 Apr 25 12:46 UTC] No.43751387[source]▶
“I like to think Hell is empty” might be a hopeful statement, as in he hopes nobody ever actually goes to Hell but that everyone, no matter how evil, repents in their dying moments and accepts the path of truth.
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2. noisy_boy ◴[21 Apr 25 14:40 UTC] No.43752542[source]▶
Or that it is empty for eternity for each and all who are there. Endless solitude would be a hellish punishment.
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3. boroboro4 ◴[21 Apr 25 15:25 UTC] No.43753018[source]▶
That’s how I’ve read it firstly. Hard to imagine worse hell than this to me.

And then I realized the real meaning of the quote. Made me cry a little.

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4. barbazoo ◴[21 Apr 25 15:56 UTC] No.43753392{3}[source]▶
Same here, probably says a lot about us. Made me happy to finally understand what he actually mean.
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5. deadbabe ◴[21 Apr 25 16:40 UTC] No.43753865[source]▶
I like to think hell is empty because the people who would have been sent there for being foul and wicked are actually people with no souls: they are just p-zombies wandering the world inflicting harm. Thus, when they die, there is no actual soul being released, their matter just ceases to function.

This could also explain why some simple creatures, with no real conscious experience, don’t overpopulate heaven or Hell: they have no souls with which to populate it with. They are just matter, temporarily constructed into some form resembling a living thing.

So hell is empty, and evil is the result of soulless automatons created by accident in our world. So if you die and nothing else happens for you after, then you were a p-zombie, with no soul.

6. boroboro4 ◴[21 Apr 25 17:34 UTC] No.43754403{4}[source]▶
It also made me realize what I truly value (community and people around) and made me a bit more hopeful about the future.