Malachi’s prophecy about future popes
Saint Malachy (1049-1148) was a 12th century Irish priest who had predicted the number of future Popes with astonishing precision. Saint Malachy gave each Pope a short descriptive motto in Latin as: Ex Castro Tiber (The Castle on the Tiber River). Saint Malachy supposedly had a vision of the future lineage of the Popes, so he wrote it down and gave it to the Vatican.
A Belgian priest, Arnold de Wion, allegedly found Malachy’s original manuscript in the Vatican and included it in his book. Lignum vitae, which was published in 1595.
Opponents argue that Malachy’s list is a forgery drawn up by Arnold de Wion some 447 years later. However, Malachy’s (or Wion’s?) Prophetic motto describes each Pope quite accurately even after the year 1595.
There are two versions of Malachi’s list: one contains 111 and the other 112 Popes. The list of future Popes ends at number 111 (or 112 if we consider another list), and critics argue that not Malachy, but someone else, put the 112th Pope on the list many years later. This is possible, because the list has been kept unnoticed in the Vatican archives for more than 400 years. After its rediscovery, Vatican authorities said the list was false.
The last Pope, however, is not numbered, so the motto about Petrus Romanus (whom some scholars consider the last 112th Pope) may just be a continuation of the previous motto (Gloria Olivae).
The list of Popes that Malachy had predicted can be found on English Wikipedia.
Critics also say that Nostradamus created the list, because he wanted to avoid persecution, and could also use De Wion as a disguise.
The motto of the last Pope (Petrus Romanus, either the 111th Pope characterized as Gloria Olivae and expanded with yet another motto; or the 112th Pope, but not numbered like other Popes) is: In extreme persecution, the seat of the Holy Roman Church. it will be occupied by Peter the Roman, who will feed the sheep through many tribulations; when they are finished, the city of the seven hills will be destroyed, and the terrible or fearsome Judge will judge his people. The end.
“The city of seven hills” can be anything, even the system of the world as we know it. There is also uncertainty about the word “persecution”. Arnold of Wion used an abbreviation “psecutione”, which means both persecution and duration of time – “prosecutione”. Malachy’s original list ends with number 111 (with motto: Gloria Olivae).
It is known that Pope Benedict XVI comes from the Olivetan order, which was founded around the year 1313. Pope John Paul II, 110th in the order, describes himself with the motto Labor de Solis (From the work of the sun) and was in fact, it was born on the day of the solar eclipse.
The name Petrus Romanus is not on Malachy’s original list.
The Nostradamus prophecies are written in verses, which are very difficult to understand, and their interpretation can have hundreds of directions. An argument for the idea that Nostradamus disguised himself as Malachy is the time when Malachy’s prophecy came to light, in the year 1595, shortly after Nostradamus’s death (1566). The second argument is that Arnold de Wion lived at the same time as Nostradamus and they could know themselves.
Black potato?
Malachy says nothing about Black Pope, but a quatrain (C6Q16) in the book The prophecies written by Nostradamus may indicate the arrival of a black Pope:
What the young Falcon will take,
For the Normans of France and Picardy:
The Negroes of the Black Forest temple site.
He will make an inn and a Lombardy fire.
The Nostradamus prophecies are divided into centuries (cycles of time). From the above verses it is clear that Nostradamus spoke in riddles. The term “Black Pope” does not come from him but from people who tried to decipher his prophetic quatrains. However, Pope Benedict XVI has a black man on his coat of arms (known as Caput Aethiopum in heraldry). Scholars are still not sure of its origin. The Bavarian district of Freising (Germany) has used the head of a crowned black man as a symbol since 1316. Some scholars say that Caput Aethiopum symbolizes Balthazar, one of the Magi (Magi or Kings of the East who visited Jesus after his birth).