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.”
“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.