Nairobi — SURPRISING NEWS CAME from the Vatican the other day. Pope Benedict XVI has reversed centuries of the Roman Catholic teaching about the existence of a place called Purgatory or Limbo, dismissing it as "only a theological hypothesis, and not a definitive truth of the faith."

The concept of Purgatory is a halfway house between life on earth and heaven (or hell), a notion akin to the Hadean underworld of Greek mythology.

The foundation of the teaching is that most men and women are at their death not good enough for heaven, and not bad enough for hell. Therefore, there must be a transitional place where one's soul sojourns before being purified and admitted to heaven, and presumably, if that fails, one is cast into Hell.

The teaching, which has never been officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church as a doctrine of faith, was also based on the belief that, as children who are aborted or who die before being baptised cannot have been freed from original sin (the so-called sin of Adam) by Christ's salvation, they are therefore excluded from "communion with God" (read heaven).

The same was said to apply to "holy men and women" who lived before the advent of Christ, and who were liberated by Christ in his "descent into hell" after his death.

The International Theological Commission, which is the body at the Vatican in charge of such matters, has now said that "Limbo" reflected "an unduly restrictive view of salvation," presumably meaning that there must be millions of children who die without being baptised, and millions of men and women who have never known Jesus, and who in spite of their being guilty of the original sin, should not be kept in Purgatory for an indefinite period.

Otherwise Purgatory would be a massively overcrowded place, with innocent babies mingling with half-holy, half-sinful adults, all waiting to be vetted for purification before entry into heaven.

In mediaeval times, the Roman Catholic Church used to sell "indulgences" for money. That is, on payment of money to the Church, a person could "buy" a number of days' remission from Purgatory. The amount to be paid used to vary with one's hierarchy in Church.

Prayers for the dead, and reading of the scriptures, could also help to reduce a soul's sojourn in Purgatory, but the practice of selling the "right" to remission of sins must rank as one of the most scandalous money-making rackets in the Catholic Church's history.

Perhaps the present-day Catholic Church should consider taking a full account of approximately how much money was thus paid to it, and donate the equivalent thereof to the communities being afflicted by war, pestilence, and poverty.

THE BANISHING OF LIMBO AS A NON -scriptural non-doctrinal "theological hypothesis" leaves quite a number of questions unanswered.

To begin with, if one now dies, there are only two options. Either one goes directly to eternal bliss in heaven, or to eternal damnation in hell.

And as there is no longer a Limbo from which a soul can be promoted to heaven as a result of prayers, what will be the use of the Requiem Mass unless the prayers will be meant to persuade God to change His mind and promote some denizens of hell to heaven, or cast down some souls from heaven to hell?

The same Pope Benedict XVI was recently reported reminding a parish gathering in Rome that if one failed to "admit blame and promise to sin no more" one risks "eternal damnation - the Inferno". The Pope added: "Hell really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it any more."

Back to the days of Dante's "Inferno"! The clear implication of the Pope's statements is that there is, indeed, a physical place called "hell" where there is constant weeping and gnashing of teeth and everlasting fire. Conversely, there must be a physical place called "heaven" with God, saints, angels and all other "uncanonised" holy men and women.

All this in the face of the new Catholic catechism, which holds that hell is a state of eternal separation from God, and heaven a state of being in communion with God, to be understood "symbolically rather than physically".

Pope Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, had declared in 1999 that heaven was "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but the fullness of communion with God".

Hell, by contrast, was "the ultimate consequence of sin itself, rather than a physical place. Hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitely separate themselves from God".

So, where does this apparent contradiction between John Paul II and Benedict XVI leave us? Is there, indeed, a physical place called heaven and another one called hell? Are they both eternal? Can one go from heaven to hell and vice-versa?

If God created man in His own image, and He knew, ab initio, that man would transgress His laws, is there no room for mercy and forgiveness, so that hell becomes redundant and every human creature of God ends up in Heaven?

Is it in conformity with God's nature to punish some of His own creatures for ever and ever, while rewarding others for ever more? In the Book of Psalms, we read that God's mercy endureth for ever. Or doesn't it?

Mr Waruhiu is a Nairobi-based lawyer