The Pope, Hell, and the Nonagenarian Journalist

I'm probably a bit late to the game here, but I thought I'd do my bit answering a question on the mind of many Catholics....

Dear Apologist, I heard the Pope changed the Catholic teaching on Hell.  Is that true?

First, some background.  Every now and then the Pope has a conversation with the 93-year-old Italian Atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari.  Scalfari makes no recording, takes no notes, and later "reconstructs" the conversation from memory.  Each time this happens the write-up contains some outrageous thing supposedly coming from the Pope. 

Everyone gets up in arms, the media reports on it, and then the Vatican has to issue a statement disavowing the Scalfari’s interview.  This has happened a half dozen times now.  In this instance, Pope Francis supposedly said there is no such thing as Hell and the damned simply disappear -  a view called “Annihilationism”. 

But again, there is no reason to think such a thing was actually said.  You can feel free to ignore the whole thing.


Now... let’s suppose the Pope actually did tell Scalfari the damned are annihilated.  Would that change Church teaching? 

Nope.  Not even a little bit.  Not even at all. 

People often imagine the Pope’s relationship with the Church as if he is a prophet receiving direct missives from God.  And thus we’re supposedly bound to anything he says or thinks.  This isn’t the case at all. 

The Pope is the chief bishop of the Church.  He enjoys protection from error when officially defining a dogma of the faith, but otherwise he is capable of errors in both thought and word.  So even if he actually professed Annihilationism to Scalfari, that would (at most) mean is the Pope is wrong about Hell. 

If you want to know the Church’s teaching on Hell, refer to paragraph 1035 in the Catechism. It reads:

“The Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell.  The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in Whom alone man can possess life and happiness.” - CCC 1035