I, the Devil, Agree with Pope Francis

Yes, I am in complete agreement with the Pope’s latest pronouncement, that there is no hell, and that those who die in sin merely disappear, while those good souls join God and Jesus in heaven.

Finally somebody with the nerve to speak the truth!  There is no hell.  There is no eternal fire.  I do not even own a pitchfork, by the way.  And I am sensitive to smoke, I have asthma, you know, so the idea of me tending the fire and brimstone for all time is patently absurd.  Nor do I have a tail.  Or a hoof on my foot.  I did have bunions but I had those surgically repaired in 1450 by a very brutal Italian surgeon.  But he got the job done, my feet have given me no trouble since.

What about Dante, you ask?  Don’t get me started on Dante.  He made that all up.  Circles of hell.  What does that even mean– that hell is structured like the Guggenheim museum, and that you can roller-skate around in circles as you descend ever nearer to the vile center – where I sit with my tail and my pitchfork and my hooved foot?

No, Dante was on drugs.

Milton?  He was fantasizing.  Paradise lost?  “Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven,” I supposedly quoth.  Codswallop.  I never said any such thing.

There is no hell.  Pope Francis is right.   What a gift to give the people this Good Friday!  They no longer need to live in fear, like little babies.  They can grow up and choose a righteous moral path for its own sake, not for some infantile dread of what might become of them in this horror-story afterlife.

So, why, you might ask, am I here, if there is no hell?  What is the devil’s job, if there is no inferno?  What am I to do with the millions of “souls” that I supposedly bought from the sinners over the centuries?  Where are they to go, now that their contract is complete?

And most importantly, who am I, Lucifer, the Lord of Darkness, if there is no darkness?

I’ll tell you who I am.  In a minute.  First, I have to put my fish shaped mitre on my head and scoot over to  that window where you might hear me muttering some nonsense syllables.  But it won’t take long, I assure you.  I will be right back.  And trust me, all will be revealed…