A BUSY Easter weekend. Wind, rain and snow all combined to keep me mostly indoors. I did try and get out for a run on Saturday morning, to the apparent incredulity of Barney the Beagle whose reluctance gave every impression of thinking he should rather be conserving his strength for the Easter thrill of seeking out any chocolate egg that might be carelessly placed less than six feet off the ground.

The Bishop of Salisbury kept the city firmly in the news claiming that it had been violated by the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal four weeks ago, rightly drawing attention to the puzzlement and anger still felt by many of us.

In the midst of your festivities, you may not have noticed a little controversy stirred up by the report of an interview supposedly given by the Pope, in which it was claimed that he said that hell no longer existed.

It was, of course, to the relief of traditional believers, swiftly denied. But Vatican commentators (a profession that was overlooked by my careers adviser at school) noted that Pope Francis is opening up debate about what many outside the church see as outdated thinking.

The notion that hell is a vast torture chamber into which the souls of unbelievers are condemned for eternity endures to this day.

The Doom painting above the chancel arch in St Thomas’s Church was commissioned at the end of the 15th Century to strike terror in the hearts of the congregation of those days. Today it offers an amusing picture of past beliefs rather than an exhortation to live a life of charity and righteousness.

If dragons and fiery pits don’t do it for us now, does hell still have a place in the 21st Century?

Is the fear of getting caught the only deterrent for spy murderers; tyrants who gas attack and bomb hospitals, women and children; purveyors of lies and fake news and child sex traffickers; retribution in this life rather than the next?

I inadvertently stumbled across hell a few years back, in a famous flat-pack furniture store in Croydon, jammed with holiday shoppers eager for a bargain, devoid of serving staff and with queues which stretched as far as the next bank holiday: a stark representation of that most famous line ‘Hell is other people’.

The Pope is right: fire and brimstone has had its day.

But each of us still has to live with our misdeeds, the consequences of our actions on others, our consciences and our individual and collective failure to call out injustice.

We share our lives with all those around us. We can choose how we live with them - whether we want to create heaven or hell.