Purgatory
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Purgatory is a passing intermediate state after physical death for purifying or purging a soul. A common analogy is dross being removed from metal in a furnace.
Image of a fiery purgatory by Ludovico Carracci. Top: Christ directing, with Mary and interceding saints. Middle: Angel showing a soul the intercessors. Bottom: souls being purged with various attitudes.
Image of a non-fiery purgatory (Gustave Doré: illustration for Dante's Purgatorio, Canto 24 in Divine Comedy). Right: Dante and companions observe. Middle: willing souls gather round a sweet-smelling tree with fruit they cannot eat, to be purged of residual gluttony.
Dante gazes at Purgatory (shown as a mountain) in this 16th-century painting.
Purgatory, by Peter Paul Rubens. Top: Trinity, with Mary; Middle: Angels; Lower: purified souls being pulled up towards heaven; Bottom: souls in non-fiery purgation
Indulgence
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In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for (forgiven) sins". The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes an indulgence as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions…"
Inscription on the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome: Indulgentia plenaria perpetua quotidiana toties quoties pro vivis et defunctis (English: "Perpetual everyday plenary indulgence on every occasion for the living and the dead")
Apostolic Benediction and Plenary Indulgence Parchment
Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas bestows the Easter Mass Plenary Indulgence in 2012 (St. John the Evangelist Metropolitan Cathedral, Dagupan, Philippines).
A 1948 reproduction of the Stradanus engraving, a 17th-century certificate for indulgences, in return for cash contributions to build a shrine