Fr. Matthew Kirby (personal friend.)
...This rendering of Hell might be expressed for Roman Catholics as making Purgatory and Hell contiguous and similar in purpose, with the former remaining the fiery purification of the just pre-Parousia, while the latter is re-conceptualised as the more difficult purification of the damned to be completed in the Age to come. This is basically equivalent to patristic universalism and is not as great a modification of the ordi-nary teaching as it might seem, since the Eastern version of Purgatory has generally conceived it as deliverance from Hell and the Western version tended to maximise the commonality between Purgatory and Hell in the past. Another construal which might trouble Roman Catholics less...is a slightly stronger version of Pope Benedict XVI’s hypothesis in Spe Salvi that the great majority of people go to Purgatory rather than Hell (or Heaven). He bases this on the assumption that for most "there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God," whereas there are relatively few wicked persons in whom true love has been totally suppressed through sin, and relatively few deeply sanctified people who are totally given over to the demands of love. By taking John 1:9 literally, where Christ is the light that enlightens every human being, we might speculate that instead of few there are none who finish the process of death entirely in the darkness, meaning that there is a cord of love, however thin in some, that binds all to God and prevents sinners dying in implacable opposition to God. In that case, Hell becomes an "asymptotic" theoretical extension of Purgatory that is never actually reached, though it is approached ever closer the more wicked the sinner during this life.
https://afkimel.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/kirby-hell-eternal-and-finite.pdf
The first option Fr. Kirby offers Roman Catholics here is identical to what St. Ambrose purposed in the 4th century.
St. Ambrose (Bishop of Milan from 374 A.D. to 397 A.D. Venerated as Saint by Catholics and Orthodox):
Our Savior has appointed two kinds of resurrection in the Apocalypse. 'Blessed is he that hath part in the first resurrection,' for such come to grace without judgment. As for those who do not come to the first, but are reserved unto the second resurrection, these shall be disciplined until their appointed times, between the first and the second resurrection; or, if they should not have fulfilled them then, they shall remain still longer in punishment until they have paid the very last farthing.
Psalmum I Enarratio (Exposition on Psalm 1), section 36.
And Fr. Kirby's first option also seems identical to the view of this 8th century Roman Catholic commentator on the Apocalypse.
Ambrosius Autpertus (Bennedictine monk, abbot, and Theologian who wrote commentaries on Holy Scripture.)
Rev 20:10 “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are: and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever (Latin: saecula saeculorum)." But when it says, "they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever (Latin: saecula saeculorum)," it is not to be taken in such a way that no sentence of God’s mercy is left at all: but because very long times (Latin: saecula saeculorum) are appointed for punishments, which human frailty cannot measure. It can happen that even the evil spirits themselves, who are now obstinate in their wickedness, after very long times are freed by God’s mercy, when they put off the nature which they corrupted, and are reformed to that for which they were created. But if this is so, it does not detract from divine justice, because they will have paid for a very long time what they deserved.
Source: Ambrosius Autpertus--Commentary on the Apocalypse (c. 784 AD), Book 10, ch. 36. Patrologia Latina 89:1391.
Footnote: Anglican, Orthodox, and Protestant proponents of the Wider Hope often point out that the Greek word "aion" and it's adjectival forms don't always signify unlimited duration. But most Catholics probably don't realize that the Latin words "aeterna," "aeternus," and "aeternum" are derived from "aevum" (The Latin equivalent of the Greek aion--which, like aion, means "age"). Or that the Latin Vulgate uses aeternum to translate the Hebrew "ha olam" (which basically means for the foreseeable future.) And does so in places where it cannot possibly refer to an infinity of time. Places like Ecclesiastees 1:4 (i.e. generations come and go, but the earth is ha olam.) The New Testament repeatedly tells us that the earth will pass away (Mt 24:35/Mk 13:31/Lk 21:33, Rev. 21:1), so WE KNOW that the meaning of Ecclesiastees 1:4 CANNOT be that the earth will last for an infinity of time. Aeternum is used to translate the Hebrew ha olam in this passage--where that CANNOT be it's meaning, so aeternum cannot mean an infinity of time everywhere it's used to represent ha olam in the Latin Vulgate. Jerome (the translator) must have understood it to have a wider range of meaning. And since he used perpetua in Exodus 29:9 (where it refers to the Aaronic priesthood--something he believed ended with The Law of Moses) he could not have understood this to always mean endless duration.
Also, the Latin phrase saecula saeculorum is equivalent to the Greek aionas ton aionon, and needn't imply endless duration either (as Ambrosius Autpertus shows.) A literal English translation would be "into the age of ages" (or "century of ages.")
This is evidence that even the Latin words (used by Popes and councils after the close of the New Testament Canon) don't necessarily signify unlimited duration (any more than aion and it's adjectival forms always signify unlimited duration in the Greek New Testament.)