Prophecy of the Popes
The Prophecy of the Popes (Latin: Prophetia Sancti Malachiae Archiepiscopi, de Summis Pontificibus, "Prophecy of Saint-Archbishop Malachy, concerning the Supreme Pontiffs") is a series of 112 short, cryptic phrases in Latin which purport to predict the Catholic popes (along with a few antipopes), beginning with Celestine II.
It was first published in 1595 by Benedictine monk Arnold Wion, who attributed the prophecy to Saint Malachy, a 12th-century Archbishop of Armagh.
[1][2] The prophecy concludes with a pope identified as "Peter the Roman", whose pontificate will allegedly precede the destruction of the city of Rome.
[4] According to an account put forward in 1871 by Abbé Cucherat, Malachy was summoned to Rome in 1139 by Pope Innocent II to receive two wool palliums for the metropolitan sees of Armagh and Cashel.
While in Rome, Malachy purportedly experienced a vision of future popes, which he recorded as a sequence of cryptic phrases.
[8] Spanish monk and scholar Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro wrote in his Teatro Crítico Universal (1724–1739), in an entry called Purported prophecies, that the high level of accuracy of the verses up until the date they were published, compared with their high level of inaccuracy after that date, is evidence that they were created around the time of publication.
In this document the entourage of the Cardinal Giovanni Girolamo Albani interprets the motto De rore coeli ("From the dew of the sky") as a reference to their master, on the base of the link between alba ("dawn") and Albani, and the dew, as a typical morning atmospheric phenomenon.
One writer notes that among the post-publication (post-1595) popes there remain "some surprisingly appropriate phrases", while adding that "it is of course easy to exaggerate the list's accuracy by simply citing its successes", and that "other tags do not fit so neatly".
Among the reported "successes" are "Light in the sky" for Leo XIII (1878–1903), with a comet in his coat of arms; "Religion depopulated" for Benedict XV (1914–22) whose papacy included World War I and the Russian Revolution; and "Flower of flowers" for Paul VI (1963–78), with fleur-de-lys in his coat of arms.
[15] Peter Bander, then Head of Religious Education at Wall Hall teacher training college, wrote in 1969:If we were to place the works of those who have repudiated the Prophecies of Malachy on scales and balance them against those who have accepted them, we would probably reach a fair equilibrium; however, the most important factor, namely the popularity of the prophecies, particularly among the ordinary people (as distinct from scholars), makes them as relevant to the second half of the twentieth century as they have ever been.M.
Their attempts at explaining the prophecies after 1590 are, I say with all respect, the sorriest trifling.In recent times, some interpreters of prophetic literature have drawn attention to the prophecy due to its imminent conclusion; if the list of descriptions is matched on a one-to-one basis to the list of historic popes since publication, Benedict XVI (2005–13) would correspond to the second to last of the papal descriptions, Gloria olivae (the glory of the olive).
Petrus Romanus, qui pascet oves in multis tribulationibus, quibus transactis civitas septicollis diruetur, & judex tremendus judicabit populum suum.
