The Pope has reversed centuries of Roman Catholic teaching and abandoned the concept of limbo, held since mediaeval times to be the place to which the souls of babies who die without baptism are consigned.

The Vatican’s International Theological Commission said that limbo reflected an “unduly restrictive view of salvation”.

The idea of limbo has never been part of formal doctrine, and has no basis in scripture. It is based on the belief that children who are aborted or who die before being baptised cannot have been freed from original sin by Christ’s salvation and are therefore excluded from Heaven, or “communion with God”. The same was said to apply to “holy men and women” who lived before the advent of Christ.

In its report, the commission said that traditional teaching on limbo had to be “reassessed” in the light of “pressing pastoral needs”. “People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from eternal happiness,” it said.

The issue had become urgent because “the number of nonbaptised infants has grown considerably” — an apparent reference to high infant mortality in the Third World.