Pope warns: "Hell . . .Exists and is eternal"...
“You have but two final destinies: Heaven and hell. Know that satan will try to remove the reality of the existence of his kingdom, hell, from you. If he makes a farce of his existence among you, he will deceive you so that you will sin and remove yourselves from the Spirit of light. And when you remove yourselves from the Spirit of light, you remove yourselves from eternal life in the Kingdom of your Father, the most high God in Heaven.”
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, February 1, 1975
LifeSiteNews reported on March 27, 2007:
In a homily delivered Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI stated, "Jesus came to tell us that He wants us all in heaven and that hell - of which so little is said in our time - exists and is eternal for those who close their hearts to His love."
The warning about hell comes in the context of love. In fact, it is because of God's love that He warns us about the possibility of eternal separation from Him. God is, "above all, love," said the Pope. "If He hates sin it is because He has an infinite love for all human beings." The Lord's aim, said Benedict, was "to save a soul and to reveal that salvation is only to be found in the love of God."
While it is true that hell is rarely spoken of even from the pulpit nowadays, some bishops have been moved to warn about hell when motivated by love - by an overwhelming concern for the salvation of those entrusted to their care.
One such bishop, Fargo Bishop Samuel J. Aquila in North Dakota, gave warning in 2004 when the media was rife with stories of John Kerry defiantly receiving communion despite his pro-abortion stance. Addressing all Catholics and especially "'pro-choice' Catholics," the bishop said, "Jesus Christ has warned clearly within the Gospel that hell is a reality and that we are free to choose it. Catholics who separate their faith life from their professional and social activities are putting the salvation of their souls in jeopardy. They risk the possibility of hell."
Other bishops have said the same thing using the phrase "jeopardizing salvation." Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary Alberta issued a public warning in 2003 to then-Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who was referred to by the Canadian media as a "devout Catholic" despite his support for abortion and homosexual marriage. "He's putting at risk his eternal salvation. I pray for the Prime Minister because I think his eternal salvation is in jeopardy," said Bishop Henry.
Similarly Bishop Michael J. Sheridan of Colorado Springs warned in 2004: "Any Catholic politicians who advocate for abortion, for illicit stem cell research or for any form of euthanasia ipso facto place themselves outside full communion with the Church and so jeopardize their salvation." He added poignantly, "Any Catholics who vote for candidates who stand for abortion, illicit stem cell research or euthanasia suffer the same fateful consequences."
Prior to his elevation to the pontificate, Cardinal Ratzinger too spoke of the consequence of hell proceeding from attacks on the sanctity of life. "When, as today, there is a market in human organs, when fetuses are produced to make spare organs available, or to make progress in research and preventive medicine, many regard the human content of these practices as implicit. But the contempt for man that underlies it, when man is used and abused, leads -- like it or not -- to a descent into hell," he said in an address in 2001 at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
Sister Lucy describes in her Memoirs the vision of hell, shown to the three young seers by Our Lady of Fatima on July 13, 1917:
She [Our Lady of Fatima] opened Her hands once more, as She had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls [of the damned] in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons could be distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, Who had already prepared us by promising, in the first apparition, to take us to Heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.
Our Lady then explained to the children, "You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go."
“There is blindness much worse than loss of physical sight, the blindness of heart. So many are heading for the flames blindly. Man seeks to destroy the evidence of Hell, but he will learn the truth soon enough. Hell exists and Heaven exists. The sins of the flesh send more souls to hell.”
- The Bayside Prophecies
Jesus, October 2, 1970
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