Perhaps he chose the “god is good” over the “god, despite being able, will not prevent billions of reasonable and decent people from suffering eternally” fork in the road. You can’t logically choose both, and if you’re the pope, you probably had better have a belief in the goodness of god.
There is an older stream of christian thought on heaven and hell, still somewhat present in eastern christianity, that they are not separate places people are sent to.
In this view they are the same thing, simply the direct experience of the unattenuated light of god. A repentant person will experience this as mercy and all encompassing love, an unrepentant one will experience it as excruciating shame and terror. But they are both getting the same "treatment" so to speak.
Hell, whatever it is, is where people end up when they'd rather be there than be with Christ.
God will never force you to love Him and accept Him. He gives you the choice, the rest is up to you.
According to Catholic teaching, non-Christians can be saved if (1) they are "invincibly ignorant" (i.e. their ignorance of the truth of Christianity is not their own fault), and (2) they have an "implicit desire" for the Christian God
Whatever your beliefs are, they aren’t catholicism.
I am not sure which label I should use for myself besides Christian as in 'follower of Christ', who tries to follow the Bible as accurately as possible, believing it to be the direct and absolute message from God.
Which indeed makes me incompatible with Catholicism.