I have spent years in theological research and ,all those that have, know the Pope was surprisingly correct about “hell”. Hell is nothingness— oblivion, nonexistence. I can absolutely prove it. It was not penal enough for the institutional “church” to scare people into attendance and giving money so it was modified after Dante’s Inferno was written as a poem 1300 years after the Resurrection.
The proof, of course, is the “Word” of God. The actual word of God was in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic ( spoken by His Son) . In Hebrew the word was Sheol” meaning “pit or grave” ( no eternal life there). Greek was “Hades” meaning what ever “Sheol” meant. The Greeks literally made up the word “Hades” for “Sheol”.
Jesus learned Aramaic as an Essene , in my opinion, and He used the word “Gehenna”, meaning “the Jerusalem city dump called Hennon. “Gehenna” literally means “ of Hennon”. There is no afterlife in the city dump.
In John 3:16 we read that the only eternal life is through “belief” ( acceptance as true) in Jesus as the Son of God ( not Joseph and not David). There is absolutely no eternal life in a “hell”. People need to throw away the King James , It is badly mistranslated.
Matthew 25:41
And then He will say to those on His left, “Depart from me, you accursed ones, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”