For thousands of years, people all over the ancient world claimed to have the powers of foresight. In 1143, The Prophecy of the Popes was created – listing the future attributes of the 112 pontiffs succeeding St. Peter. This 900-year-old prophecy predicted that Benedict XVI would be the 111th pope, therefore, if it is correct, the current Papal Conclave will bring about the end of the world.
In 1595, a Benedictine monk named Arnold de Wyon published Lignum Vitae – in which he claimed to have โdiscovered The Prophecy of the Popes,โ which were originally written by St. Malachy, the Archbishop of Armagh in 1143. In 1871, Abbรฉ Cucherat, in his book The Prophecies of the Succession of the Popes , tells us that in 1139 Malachy was โsummoned to Rome Pope Innocent II to receive two wool palliums for the metropolitan sees of Armagh and Cashel.โ
While in Rome, Malachy is said to have experienced a โvision of future popes,โ which he recorded as a sequence of cryptic phrases describing their personality traits. St. Malachy allegedly gave his manuscript to Innocent II and the document remained unknown in the Roman Archives until its discovery in 1590.
Examining the Papal Prophecy
The first pope listed after St. Peter was Ex caลฟtro Tiberis, who is noted as having lived in a โcastle on the Tiber.โ Regarding the final Pope, de Wyon claimed that Malachy wrote an apocalyptic statement which translates from Latin as:
โIn the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit. [sic] Peter the Roman, who will nourish the sheep in many tribulations; when they are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The end.โ
When the text was discovered in 1595 it caused great intrigue and carried an air of legitimacy because so many of Malachyโs descriptions matched those of previous Popes. To many, the resignation of Benedict XVI in 2013 indicated the beginning of the End of Days โ also as prophesied.
However, not a shred of tangible evidence exists to associate Malachy with the prophecy, and the โoriginal documentโ that de Wyon claimed to have โfoundโ in the Vatican Secret Archives has never been seen by anyone else, ever. Soon after its discovery, many Catholic scholars deemed it as a contemporary forgery, however many others have continued to believe in the documentโs authenticity.
Skeptics argue that historically when people had prophetic visions they told a lot of people, but Malachy apparently didnโt mention his vision to a soul, nor did his biographer, St. Bernard of Clairvaux; who documented several of Malachyโs other alleged miracles. And, depending on how you interpret the prophecy, Benedict XVI is not the 111th pope! Ten antipopes are listed among the โ112 Popesโ – so it is argued that Benedict XVI was the 101st pope.
Proving the Prophecy as a Forgery
Among the historians who maintained that the prophecies were a late 16thโcentury forgery, Spanish monk and scholar Benito Jerรณnimo Feijรณo y Montenegro wrote Teatro Crรญtico Universal between 1724โ1739. In an entry entitled โPurported propheciesโ he observed a โhigh level of accuracy in the descriptions of the popes until the date they were publishedโ โฆ then, a โhigh level of inaccuracy after the publication date.โ Friar Benito Jerรณnimo Feijรณo y Montenegro was a Spanish monk and scholar who led the Age of Enlightenment in Spain and debunked myths and superstitions. This observation convinced him the prophecy was โcreated just before its publication.โ
Having established that the prophecy was most probably a hoax, why were the prophecies created in the first place? A theory was forward by a 17th-century French priest Louis Morรฉri in his encyclopedia Le Grand Dictionnaire historique which suggested โsupporters of Cardinal Girolamo Simoncelli created them in a bid to support his bid to become pope in the 1590s.” His evidence was in that the prophecies predicted the pope that would follow Urban VII was “Ex antiquitate Urbis” (“from the old city”), and Simoncelli was from Orvieto, which in Latin is Urbevetanum โold cityโ (Miller, 1981).
Writing extensively about the prophecy being a forgery, M. J. O’Brien, a Catholic priest who authored an 1880 monograph on the prophecies said: โThese prophecies have served no purpose. They are absolutely meaningless. The Latin is bad. It is impossible to attribute such absurd triflings … to any holy source. Those who have written in defence of the prophecy have brought forward scarcely an argument in their favour. Their attempts at explaining the prophecies after 1590 are, I say with all respect, the sorriest triflingโ (OโBrien, 1880).
What Does the Hoaxed Prophecy Say of Today and Tomorrow?
If the list of descriptions is matched directly to a list of historic popes since its publication,ย Benedict XVIย (2005โ13) corresponds to the second last noted pope, described asย โGloria olivaeโย (the glory of the olive).ย And the final prophecy predicts theย Apocalypse: โIn the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman [as bishop], who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills [i.e.ย Rome] will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.โ
Pope Francis was not born Peter – his name was Jorge Mario Bergoglio – and he is showing no signs of preparing to bring about the end of the world. Well, I hope he isnโt!
Newscredit: Ancient Origin