The death of Pope Francis could spark armageddon, according to a 900-year-old prophecy. He died at the age of 88 on Monday after spending time in hospital for a respiratory infection that worsened into pneumonia.
While the Catholic world is in mourning, a chilling conspiracy has suggested his death should cause concern across the planet. According to a book called Prophecy of the Popes, written in 1139 by St Malachy, the death of Francis I could spark the day of judgement. The ancient text is based on St Malachy’s trip to Rome where he claimed that he received a vision of the future, including the name of every pope from that moment until the end of days.
He shared details of 109 future popes in the book with Pope Francis being the last. Of the last pope, St Malachy wrote: “In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End.”
While the Irish holyman’s predictions have proved to be fairly accurate so far, author Robert Howells says there is room for interpretation. He explored St Malachy’s prophetic visions in one of his books, The Last Pope, and examined the theory that Pope Francis’ death could spark armageddon.
He said: “Malachy wrote the prophecies, supposedly in the 12th century, and he gave them to Pope Innocent in 1139. He listed 109 remaining Popes, and it ends with the last one – and it’s the only one who has more than one line of description.”
The Prophecy of the Popes was “lost” in the Vatican archives until 1559 and there has since been much debate about their authenticity. Scholars have also questioned whether Pope Francis’ extended description was added in when the book was published as it is the only one which is longer than two words.
However, Howells says some of the predictions can’t be shrugged off as coincidence. He discovered evidence in his research that some popes tried to emulate what was “foresaw” about them, including “Cardinal Spellman who took a boat full of sheep down the Tiber in 1958 to try to fit the prophecy of ‘shepherd and mariner’”.
Howells added: “Pope Benedict XV had this little phrase assigned to him by Malachy, which was ‘religion depopulated’. Now during his reign, from 1914 to 1922, there was the First World War, which killed 20 million people, the 1918 pandemic of Spanish flu, which ravaged Europe, and the Bolshevik Revolution, which declared atheism across Russia.
“If you were going to sum up that Pope from 1914 to 1922, ‘religion depopulated’ is perfect. It’s absolutely what happened. Similarly, with Pope John Paul II in 1978, who’s described as a ‘shining star’, his coat of arms was a shining star, a shooting star.
“They both came after the publication of The Prophecy of the Popes, and while John Paul could have chosen that banner, you don’t have that argument with Benedict XV. All across Europe, Catholicism was depopulated massively from Spanish Flu, World War 1, and the Bolshevik Revolution. It decimated religion, especially the Catholic religion, but religion in general across Europe. So that one’s a really interesting one, because that’s outside of the influence [of the Vatican].”
The Vatican will neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of St Malachy’s visions as it holds a strict “no authentication of prophecies” policy. Regardless of this policy, Pope Francis is the 109th pope to be appointed since the creation of St Malachy’s book.
He continued: “It says, ‘In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End.’
“In the apocalypse of St. John the formidable judge, the only judge that’s really mentioned is Jesus who returns to judge and preside over the apocalypse. The prediction doesn’t say if Peter the Roman will still be alive or dead, or will be around at the time of this kind of event.
“It’s interesting that there is a final persecution, there is Peter the Roman, these tribulations, the judgements and then it says ‘when these things are finished the city of the seven hills will be destroyed’. That’s kind of implying that Rome will be affected by war or something? Or it could be an earthquake, or a comet, which was a familiar prediction in the time Malachy is meant to have written the book.”
Reassuringly, Howells doesn’t seem too worried about Malachy’s vision of an impending extinction-level event. He said: “Technically the destruction could be a thousand years from now. It could just be saying that this is the last Pope that’s on the list. It doesn’t necessarily link the two. It might just be symbolic.
“There is another prophecy about the Pope leaving the Vatican as it collapses, like there’s some physical destruction. But Malachy’s doesn’t really have that in its most basic form. It just talks about the final persecution.
“It’ll be interesting to see what comes next. What will happen after the current Pope dies? Presumably, they’ll just go to conclave and choose another.”
