The Vatican has denied that Pope Francis told a well-known Italian journalist that "there is no hell".

The quote came in an article in Italy's La Repubblica daily. But the Vatican said "no quotations" in the article "should be considered as a faithful transcription" of the Pope's words.

The Vatican said the article was based on a private meeting the Pope had with the daily's founder, Eugenio Scalfari.

Catholic Church doctrine affirms the existence of hell and its eternity.

The souls of sinners descend into hell, where they suffer "eternal fire", the Catholic catechism states.

However, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic in England and Wales, said "there's nowhere in Catholic teaching that actually says any one person is in hell".

He told the BBC that the Pope was apparently exploring "the imagery of hell - fire and brimstone and all of that".

"That's never been part of Catholic teaching, it's been part of Catholic iconography, part of Christian iconography," he said.

Speaking to the newspaper’s founder, journalist and atheist Eugenio Scalfari, Francis was quoted as saying of those who die in a state of mortal sin: “They are not punished. Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and take their place among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. A hell doesn’t exist, the disappearance of sinning souls exists.”

If the Pope indeed said those words, the consequences would be catastrophic for the Catholic Church, which — according to its own catechism — “affirms the teaching of hell and its eternity,” including “eternal fire,” although it stresses that the “The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God.”

The Vatican immediately critiqued Scalfari’s account, saying the quotes in the article were not “a faithful transcription of the Holy Father’s words.”

This is not the first time Scalfari — an avowed atheist — has published a controversial statement attributed to Pope Francis, only for the Vatican to walk it back. Francis’s continued relationship with Scalfari, despite these controversies, says as much about Francis’s unorthodox approach to the media as it does about Francis’s theology.

Scalfari and the pope have a longstanding history
Scalfari — a longtime friend and intellectual sparring partner of Pope Francis — has frequently boasted of his unorthodox interviewing methods. Scalfari neither uses a recording device, nor does he take notes. Rather, he reconstructs his conversations with the pope from memory, something that has gotten Scalfari into hot water with the Vatican in the past.

BBC