The best description of hell I ever heard was also from a Vatican worker.
Paraphrasing a bit:
> ''Hell, by definition, is just a place where God does not exist. To a Christian, that is the worst place imaginable. We speak of fire and brimstone and eternal physical torture, but that's only the best analogy we have to describe it. It's just a place without the presence of God. People have their entire life to form a relationship with God; if they don't, they go to Hell. When I say, "you are going to Hell", it means you will be without God forever because once you are dead, you can't change anything. As a non-Christian, this is meaningless to you, but thinking about it makes me sad.''
The discussion continued to whether he believed all this stuff was real. Again, paraphrasing...
> ''What is real? Pain, love, remorse, joy, anger...all of these are things we can identify and predict, but not explain. They are all in your head; they have no physical manifestation to inspect. We could argue that they aren't "real", but they certainly exist. "Real" is semantics. God, and by extension, Hell, both exist. That doesn't mean I can convince you they are real.''
Frankly, it was a pretty interesting discussion.