limbo

In Roman Catholicism, a region between heaven and hell, the dwelling place of souls not condemned to punishment but deprived of the joy of existence with God in heaven. The concept probably developed in the Middle Ages. Two distinct kinds of limbo were proposed: the limbus patrum (“fathers' limbo”), where Old Testament saints were confined until liberated by Jesus in his “descent into hell”; and the limbus infantum or limbus puerorum (“children's limbo”), the abode of those who died without actual sin but whose original sin had not been washed away by baptism or whose free will was restricted by mental deficiency. Today the Catholic church downplays the notion of limbo, and it is not an official part of church doctrine.