In a document published April 20, the commission said the traditional concept of limbo — as a place where unbaptized infants spend eternity but without communion with God — seemed to reflect an “unduly restrictive view of salvation.”

The church continues to teach that, because of original sin, Baptism is the ordinary way of salvation for all people and urges parents to baptize infants, the document said.

But there is greater theological awareness today that God is merciful and “wants all human beings to be saved,” it said. Grace has priority over sin, and the exclusion of innocent babies from heaven does not seem to reflect Christ’s special love for “the little ones,” it said.

“Our conclusion is that the many factors that we have considered ... give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision,” the document said. “We emphasize that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge.”

The 41-page document, titled “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized,” was authorized by Pope Benedict XVI earlier this year.

The 30-member International Theological Commission acts as an advisory panel to the Vatican, in particular to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Its documents are not considered expressions of authoritative church teaching, but they sometimes set the stage for official Vatican pronouncements.

The commission’s document said salvation for unbaptized babies who die was becoming an urgent pastoral question, in part because their number is greatly increasing. Many infants today are born to parents who are not practising Catholics, and many others are the unborn victims of abortion, it said.

Limbo has never been defined as church dogma and is not mentioned in the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states simply that unbaptized infants are entrusted to God’s mercy.

But limbo has long been regarded as the common teaching of the church. In the modern age, “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,” the new document said. Parents in particular can experience grief and feelings of guilt when they doubt their unbaptized children are with God, it said.

The church’s hope for these infants’ salvation reflects a growing awareness of God’s mercy, the commission said. But the issue is not simple, because appreciation for divine mercy must be reconciled with fundamental church teachings about original sin and about the necessity of Baptism for salvation, it said.

In the fifth century, St. Augustine concluded that infants who die without Baptism were consigned to hell. By the 13th century, theologians referred to the “limbo of infants” as a place where unbaptized babies were deprived of the vision of God, but did not suffer because they did not know what they were deprived of.

Through the centuries, popes and church councils were careful not to define limbo as a doctrine of the faith and to leave the question open. That was important in allowing an evolution of the teaching, the theological commission said.

A key question taken up by the document was the church’s teaching that Baptism is necessary for salvation. That teaching needs interpretation, in view of the fact that “infants ... do not place any personal obstacle in the way of redemptive grace,” it said.

The church’s magisterium has moved toward a more “nuanced understanding” of how a saving relationship with the church can be realized, it said. This does not mean that someone who has not received the sacrament of Baptism cannot be saved, it said. Rather, it means that “there is no salvation which is not from Christ and ecclesial by its very nature,” it said.