[Fr. Waclaw Hryniewicz, 20th Century Roman Catholic Priest, Theologian, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Professor of theology, and director of the Ecumenical Institute at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin Poland]
"Universal hope is the duty of every Christian. Traditional eschatology perceives only two ultimate possibilities: heaven or hell. It does not take into account the great synthesis of the history of the world in God. It also excludes all thoughts about the universal reconciliation of the lost creatures with God. It does not hear the voice of hope resounding in numerous biblical statements, nor does it heed the patient cry of hope which has not vanished from Christianity throughout the ages."
--Fr. Wacław Hryniewicz, Universal Salvation: Questions on Soteriological Universalism
"Thanks to this hope, I can trust that freedom is incapable of rejecting God irrevocably, definitively, and once for all."
--Fr. Wacław Hryniewicz, Universal Salvation: Questions on Soteriological Universalism, pg. 30.
"The work of redemption carried out by Christ has a universal dimension. It embraces the whole of creation, the visible and the invisible world."
--Fr. Wacław Hryniewicz. The Challenge of Our Hope: Christian Faith in Dialogue. Warsaw: Verbinum, 1996, p. 28.
https://archive.org/details/challengeofourho0000hryn
"God in Christ reconciles all things to himself, both in heaven and on earth. This reconciliation embraces the entire cosmos, the visible and the invisible. St. Paul speaks of thrones, dominions, principalities, and authorities."
-- Fr. Wacław Hryniewicz. The Challenge of Our Hope: Christian Faith in Dialogue. Warsaw: Verbinum, 1996, p. 111.
Hope dares to trust that God will not remain completely helpless in the face of human freedom, that he will finally be able to draw it towards himself, purify and transform it thanks to his patient and boundless love. This can be achieved through suffering and torment which in human language could be termed endless, aeonic, i.e.lasting for centuries, because of its quality and intensity, as is suggested by the Greek word aiōnios. A great thinker of the Early Church, Origen, one of the propagators of hope for universal salvation, was well aware of this. He pointed many times to the ambiguity of the term aiōnios, used in the Bible to denote either eternity or only long duration. He regarded the punishment, termed in the Bible as ‘eternal’, as the sign of God’s mercy, as a cure designed to bring about improvement and conversion. God will finally manage to soften and overcome any resistance and revolt of his creatures without violating their free will.
--Hryniewicz, Wacław. The Challenge of Our Hope: History and Eschatology. Theo-Logos, 2007, p. 81
[Archbishop Józef Życiński]
The Bible predicts the ultimate transfiguration of the world and tells us to expect it. Thus it gives hope for the fulfillment of permanent human yearning for the reign of the good in the whole of creation. There is in this promise a breath of truly divine universalism with regard to the destiny of humanity, the Earth, and the entire Universe.
--Archbishop Józef Życiński, “Facing the Unknown Future,” in The Challenge of Our Hope: Christian Faith in Dialogue, edited by Wacław Hryniewicz (2007), p. 29.
[Archbishop Józef Życiński]
"Anyone who truly understands what Dominus Iesus is talking about knows that this declaration does not invalidate the hope of universal salvation at all."
— Archbishop Józef Życiński, in Życie Duchowe (Winter 2001).
[Prof. Ilaria Ramelli (Bishop Kevin Britt Endowed Chair in Dogmatics and Christology: Graduate School of Theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, affiliated with the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas/Angelicum, Rome)]
From the very first Christian centuries--as is clear from what I have pointed out so far--a number of Christian thinkers supported the doctrine of universal salvation. Some Platonic Church fathers--among whom we fine Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Evagrius--were convinced that God alone is the Good and the Being; creatures can only participate in the Good and the Being. However, due to their free will, creatures are also capable of falling into evil (i.e. non-being). Evil has no positive existence, being no creature of God, but is a lack of Good and thus a lack of Being. Rational creatures who choose evil face spiritual death, but there is a resurrection from it thanks to Christ, the only human being without evil. By assuming all humanity in Himself, Christ abolishes evil from it. At the same time, every rational creature will have to adhere to the Good freely. Furthermore, these fathers were certain that, sooner or later, all will voluntarily adhere to the Good, because all rational creatures, whose logos is in the image of Christ--Logos, after knowing the Good with a pure and not obfuscated intellectual sight, will love it. No rational creature will be saved against it's will! Instead, what these fathers were certain of is that in the end all will want to be saved and will voluntarily adhere to the Good and be brought God, the Good, by Christ. They based their conviction, among else, on creation, ethical intellectualism, and the work of Christ (Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection). For these authors, such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, the resurrection of Christ, which took place historically is also the anticipated realization of the glorious eschatological resurrection of the "body of Christ," which is all humanity (and, since Christ is the Logos, all rational creatures)...The doctrine of universal restoration and salvation is eminently Christian and is rooted in the Bible, where many passages, especially from St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, inspired it. Other texts that were long deemed part of scripture before the canon was finally settled, such as the Apocalypse of Peter, also suggested universal salvation. Precisely because they regarded it as grounded in Scripture, most supporters of universal salvation, from church fathers to Julian of Norwich to our day, did not intend to oppose the church. Many of these, indeed, are saints, and some are martyrs, such as Pamphilus. Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, the main supporters of universal salvation, even elaborated this doctrine in defense of Christian orthodoxy and theodicy against the "heretics" of their day (Origen against "Gnosticism" and Marcionism, and Gregory against "Arianism"); both related the argument for universal salvation to that of the non-subordination of The Son to The Father in the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:28. Both Origen and Gregory, and many other supporters of universal salvation down through the centuries, are clear that the salvation of all depends on Christ, and not on any metaphysical or cosmological necessity, or a necessity of any other kind. Universal Salvation as a Christian hope and a Christian doctrine consistently continued over two millennia of Christianity.
--Prof. Illaria Ramelli A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich. (Pages 210-211, 213-214.)
Pope Francis
"The Good Lord will save all of us, but don't say that too loud."
https://wherepeteris.com/universalism-and-hell/
Pope St. Paul VI
Since reconciliation means the restoration of peace both between God and man and between men themselves, it is the first fruit of redemption. Like redemption, it is universal in scope and efficacy. It reaches out to the whole of creation 'until the time of universal restoration' (Acts 3, 21), when all created things are again unified in Christ, Who is the firstborn of the risen dead (cf. Col 1, 18).
Source: https://wherepeteris.com/pope-st-paul-vis-exhortation-on-reconciliation-in-the-church/
Hans Urs von Balthasar (Roman Catholic Theologian)
I do not wish to contradict anyone who, as a Christian, cannot be happy without denying the universality of hope to us so that he can be certain of his full hell: that is, after all, the view of a large number of important theologians, especially among the followers of Augustine. But, in return, I would like to request that one be permitted to hope that God's redemptive work for his creation might succeed. Certainty cannot be attained, but hope can be justified.
---Hans Urs von Balthasar Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?: With a Short Discourse on Hell (Ignatius Press, 1988), p. 187 in most printings.
[Prof. Ilaria Ramelli (Bishop Kevin Britt Endowed Chair in Dogmatics and Christology: Graduate School of Theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, affiliated with the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas/Angelicum, Rome)]
The so-called ‘condemnation of Origen’ by ‘the Church’ in the sixth century probably never occurred proper. To begin with, Origen was never condemned by an ecumenical council. The council that is usually cited as that which ‘condemned Origen’ is the fifth ecumenical council, the Second Council of Constantinople, held in 553. First of all, its ecumenicity is in fact doubtful, since it was wanted by Justinian and not by Vigilius, the bishop of Rome, who was summoned to Constantinople by Justinian and was even brought there by force; he was kept in Constantinople for eight years, from 547 to 555, and was forced to subscribe to the council’s decisions, which he initially refused to do...The anathemas, fifteen in number, were already prepared before the opening of the council, and were pronounced ‘outside the sessions’ of the council, as H. Crouzel remarks. One of these previously formulated anathemas — the first — was against Origen, and another — the fourteenth — was against the apokatastasis doctrine: ‘If anyone supports the monstrous doctrine of apokatastasis [τὴν τερατώδη ἀποκατάστασιν], be it anathema.’ Now, ‘monstrous’ qualifies a very specific kind of apokatastasis, not the doctrine as such. This ‘monstrous’ apokatastasis is that connected with the preexistence of souls and their fall into bodies, and the denial of the resurrection of the body, which was the kind of apokatastasis that was attributed to Origen by his enemies and was condemned in 543 by Justinian’s edict and by a local synod at Constantinople. It is not the apokatastasis as it was held by Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, or Maximus the Confessor. Vigilius’s documents, which were finally emanated by a council that was not wanted by him, most remarkably do not even contain Origen’s name. Origen was never formally condemned by any Christian ecumenical council...If, as it seems, Origen himself is never named in the authentic acts of the council, then Origen was never formally ‘condemned’ by the church. What is more, the Greek text of the acts of this council was lost, and the Latin translation that has come down to us is incomplete and interpolated. Even by the time of the Third Council of Constantinople in 680 there were suspicions that those fifteen anathemas were not original to the Second Council of Constantinople. Indeed, Norman Tanner excludes the anathemas from his edition of the Acts of the Councils. All this strongly suggests that Origen was not condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council...Therefore, if Origen was not condemned, a fortiori the doctrine of apokatastasis as such was not condemned either — especially not in the form in which it was held by Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and many other Fathers who were never condemned and are venerated as saints. The condemnation concerned a caricature of apokatastasis that entailed the preeixistence of souls, the denial of the resurrection of the body, and other theses that are indeed 'monstrous' and that were not held by Gregory, Maximus, or other supporters of apokatastasis.
[Ilaria Ramelli (Bishop Kevin Britt Endowed Chair in Dogmatics and Christology: Graduate School of Theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, affiliated with the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas/Angelicum, Rome)]
“The theoretical issues that underpin Patristic theories of apokatastasis are still valid for contemporary theoretical theology."
[Prof. Ilaria Ramelli (Bishop Kevin Britt Endowed Chair in Dogmatics and Christology: Graduate School of Theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, affiliated with the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas/Angelicum, Rome)]
“... the apokatastasis doctrine is biblically, philosophically, and especially Christologically grounded in its patristic supporters."
--Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, Reply to Professor Michael McClymond, Theological Studies</em> 76.4 (2015): 833.