The Vatican announced on Friday the results of a papal investigation of the concept of limbo. Church doctrine now states that unbaptized babies can go to heaven instead of getting stuck somewhere between heaven and hell. If limbo doesn't exist, what happened to everyone who was supposed to have been there already?

What happens to unbaptized babies when they die?

The Limbo of Infants (Latin limbus infantium or limbus puerorum) is the hypothetical permanent status of the unbaptised who die in infancy, too young to have committed actual sins, but not having been freed from original sin.

Why do unbaptized babies go to Limbo?

"Limbo emerged as a kind of way of softening the teaching of St. Augustine that unbaptized infants go to hell," said Frederick C. Bauerschmidt, who researches contemporary and medieval theology at Loyola College. ... Limbo was considered a place of not supernatural but natural happiness, away from the presence of God.