The New Gospel

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">… there is a purgatorial fire in which the souls of the pious are purified by a temporary punishment so that an entrance may be opened for them into the eternal country in which nothing stained can enter … [Souls detained in purgatory] are helped by the suffrages of the faithful, but especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">I am thy father’s spirit,</em></p><p><em>Doomed for a certain time to walk the night,</em></p><p><em>And for the day confined to fast in fires,</em></p><p><em>Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature</em></p><p><em>Are burnt and purged away.</em></p>