Pope John Paul II's encyclical regarding Hell

[Larry1700]

My brother-in-law said he recalls a news report (accuracy undetermined) in which they reported that Pope JPII said Hell doesn’t exist. If you choose not to believe in God, you don’t take advantage of your soul, and you become like animals after death – no soul and non-existence.

Does anyone know the encyclical to which the news report might have been referring?

 

[M-Dent]

Larry, the confusion your Brother-in-law may have most likely come the audiences below?

It’s amazing how silly distortions travel.

In three controversial Wednesday Audiences, Pope John Paul II pointed out that the essential characteristic of heaven, hell or purgatory is that they are states of being of a spirit (angel/demon) or human soul, rather than places, as commonly perceived and represented in human language. This language of place is, according to the Pope, inadequate to describe the realities involved, since it is tied to the temporal order in which this world and we exist. In this he is applying the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. Thomas Aquinas said long before him.

“Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us.” [St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q69, a1, reply 1]

Pope Jophn Paul II’s General Audience of Wednesday, 28 July 1999