"A well-known prophecy regarding the papal succession has often been erroneously attributed to Saint Malachy of Ireland, who lived from 1095 to 1148 and was famous for his prophetic gifts. The prediction actually a forgery first published in 1595, consists of a series of brief descriptions - two -and three - word phrases in Latin - of 111 popes, in sequence, from 1143 to the presumed end of the papacy. Some are opaque, and others are strikingly accurate:
     - Reader's Digest Mystery of the Unexplained

In "a book titled The War and the Prophets by Herbert Thurston (1856-1939), published in 1915 and obviously referring to World War I, Thurston looks over historical prophecies to see who had given warning of what was an overwhelming end of the world scenario then unfolding.
"Thurston goes on at some length about the Malachy list, with some real slick analysis based on the original publication in 1595. To sum up, he believes the list was a fake that originated with that book. ...Elegant logic, clear references, and thorough research. He points out that all of the papal descriptions up to the 1595 date are very accurate and usually related to elements appearing in the coat of arms of the man who would be pope. He shows how, precisely, this list could have been faked.
"After 1595, however, Thurston points out that the success rate is apparently plummeting. He goes through about twenty popes up to the one in his own time, and shows that in many instances the Latin phrase just simply doesn't fit anything to do with the pontificate or the pontiff."
"Whatever the problems Thurston had with accounting for the popes he knew up until his own time, the list actually does accord well with the popes since then.
     - Mark Hammons (M-HAMM@UMINN1.BITNET)

Pastor angelicus ('The angelic shepherd'):
Pius XII (1939-58) was a devoted student of Saint Thomas Aquinas, traditionally known as The Angelic Doctor
Pastor et nauta ('Shepherd and navigator'):
John XXIII (1958-63) was the 'shepherd and navigator' of the Second Vatican Council
Flos florum ('Flower of flowers'):
Paul VI (1963-78) had the fleur-de-lis as his personal coat of arms.
     - Reader's Digest Mystery of the Unexplained

"And for John XXIII the motto, translated into French, is 'Pasteur et Nautonnier' - 'Shepherd and Navigator'. The official title of [Prieure de] Sion's alleged Grand Master is also 'Nautonnier'."

"Jean Cocteau appeared on the list of Sion's alleged Grand Masters at Jean XXIII. In 1959, while Cocteau still presumably held the grand Mastership, Pope Pius XII died and the assembled cardinals elected, as their new pontiff, Cardinal Angelo Roncalli of Venice....Cardinal Roncalli caused considerable consternation when he chose the name of John XXIII....The antipope who abdicated in 1415...was in fact John XXIII."
"In 1976 an enigmatic little book was published in Italy...It was called The Prophecies of Pope John XXIII and contained a compilation of obscure prophetic prose poems reputedly composed by the pontiff who had died thirteen years before - in 1963....And it maintains...that John XXIII was secretly a member of the 'Rose-Croix', with whom he had become affiliated while acting as Papal Nucio in Turkey in 1935."
"In 1188 the Prieure de Sion is said to have adopted the subtitle of 'Rose-Croix Veritas'" suggesting "that Cardinal Roncalli, on becoming pope, chose the name of his own secret Grand master ...The list of Sion's alleged list of Grand Masters had been composed and deposited in the Bibliotheque Nationale no later than 1956 - three years before John XXIII became pope."

Pope John XXIII inaugurated the Second Vatican Council which enacted significant reforms to bring the Roman Catholic Church into the twentieth century. He also broke "with at least two centuries of entrenched tradition...pronouncing that a Catholic might be a Freemason. And in June 1960 he issued a profoundly important apostolic letter [which] emphasized Jesus's suffering as a human being, and maintained that the redemption of mankind has been affected by the shedding of his blood. In the context of Pope John's letter, Jesus's human Passion, and the shedding of his blood, assume a greater consequence than the Resurrection or even than the mechanics of the Crucifixion."
     - Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

"The prophecy described only four more popes after Paul VI. De medietate lunae ('From the half-moon', or 'of the middle moon') referred to John Paul I, who was elected to the papacy on August 26, 1978, and died 33 days later, on September 28 - approximately in the middle of the lunar month marked by the full moons of September 16 and October 16. The present pope, John Paul II (1978 - ), is signified by De labore solis ('From the toil of the sun'), the import of which, so far at least, is not clear. The two remaining popes are signified as De gloria olivae ('The glory of the olive') and Petrus Romanus ('Peter of Rome'). After, or perhaps during the reign of the last pope, Rome will be destroyed and the day of Final Judgment will arrive."
     - Reader's Digest Mystery of the Unexplained

The Secrets of Fatima

"The two younger children [to whom the vision of the 'beautiful Lady from Heaven' appeared near Fatima] died during the influenza epidemic of 1918-19. Lucia learned to read and write and recorded the 'secrets' the lady had told her. The first was a vision of hell. The second may be a reference to World War II:"
     -Cyril Charlie Mardindale, The Message of Fatima

Click here for details about the vision at Fatima.

The First Secret

Mary "opened her hands. The light reflecting from them seemed to penetrate into the earth, and we saw as if into a sea of fire, and immersed in that fire were devils and souls with human form, as if they were transparent black or bronze embers floating in the fire and swayed by the flames that issued from them along with clouds of smoke, falling upon every side just like the falling of sparks in great fires, without weight or equilibrium, amidst wailing and cries of pain and despair that horrified and shook us with terror. We could tell the devils by their horrible and numerous figures of baleful and unknown animals, but transparent as the black coals in a fire."

The Second Secret

"You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them God wants to establish throughout the world the devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If people will do what I will tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace. The war is going to end. But if they do not stop offending God, another and worse war will break out in the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illuminated by an unknown light, know that it is the great sign that God gives you, that He is going to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, hunger, persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father."

"During the next pontificate, that of Pius XI, Hitler annexed Austria. In January 1938, two months before this prelude to World War II, the people of western Europe beheld an extraordinary display of lights in the night sky. They lasted for two hours and were so bright that in the Alps night workers were able to see without artificial light. The lights were described as a rare form of the aurora borealis."
     -Cyril Charlie Mardindale, The Message of Fatima

The next part of the prophesy has been interpreted to tell of the rise and fall of the Russian Communist empire.

"To forestall this, I shall come to ask the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If they heed my requests, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If not, she shall spread her errors throughout the world, promoting wars and persecutions of the Church; the good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated; in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, which will be converted, and some time of peace will be given to the world. In Portugal the dogma of the faith will be kept always."

The Third Secret

The Myth
"In accordance with Lucia's instruction, her record of the lady's third secret was, reportedly, opened by Pope John XXIII in 1960. What the message said has never been made public, but according to one account, the pope told some of those closest to him in the Vatican that what he read there almost made him faint with horror.
     -Cyril Charlie Mardindale, The Message of Fatima

"Instead of being renewed, the ancient covenant between the children of the earth and the children of the stars was broken. Did Pope John Paul I die in his thirty-third day in office because he was about to transmit to the world the suppressed real Fatima message?
     - George Andrews, Extra-Terrestrials Among Us

"On September 14, 1978, a UFO as big as an ocean liner was witnessed by many thousands of people (including police) traveling all the way from the southern end of Sicily up through the entire length of the Italian peninsula to the northern frontier at the French border. The UFO then returned to hover over Rome during the nights of Sept. 15 and 16. Is it no more than an odd coincidence that this was just a fortnight before Pope John Paul I was found dead under suspicious circumstances, apparently poisoned in the manner of the Borgias while working on a speech he intended to deliver the next day? The text of the speech he had been working on was never made public.
"For the first time in the history of the Papacy, an autopsy was demanded by the Pope's family (his brother and sister), as well as by some of the best doctors in Italy. This demand was refused. "Although the Pope supposedly died of a heart attack, he had no previous history of heart trouble. Shortly before he died, his doctor examined him and declared him to be in excellent health. Cardinal Gantin, who was one of the last people to see him alive, said: 'Neither his face nor his gestures betrayed any sign of fatigue or weakness'.
"According to the Vatican, the first person to find him dead was Father Magee, who described his face as peacefully illuminated with his famous smile. However, this detail is in direct contradiction with the official diagnosis of infarctus of the myocardium.

"During his brief reign, Pope John Paul I had discovered the existence of corruption on an enormous scale within the Vatican bank, and had begun to make a whole series of major changes in both the Vatican power structure and Church policies. Some of these changes were so sweeping and of such extreme importance that the appropriate term for them would be 'revolutionary'. On the night of Sept. 28-29, 1978, many highly influential people in key positions had a wide variety of strong motives to poison this Pope with the intention of reforming the Church according to the example set by the usually non-violent Jesus, who suddenly seized a whip and, without asking anyone's permission or advice, drove the money-changers from the Temple. Following the signs in the sky over the entire length of Italy, repeated two nights in a row over Rome, it would have been entirely in character for Pope John Paul I to have inaugerated his reform of the Church by revealing to the world the true Fatima message."
     - George Andrews, Extra-Terrestrials Among Us

The Reality
"On the afternoon of Wednesday, May 13, 1981, the 'Popemobile', not yet fitted with the now-familiar plexiglass shield, slowly traversed St. Peter's Square in observance of the weekly General Audience. In it stood John Paul II, dispensing his blessings to the crowd of 20,000 which was parting like a sea of humanity at his feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a young woman wearing a white blouse which seemed to radiate sunlight from out of the deepening shadows of the waning day. In that light, the Pontiff thought he glimpsed an image of the Blessed Virgin -- could it be a picture which the girl was wearing? As he turned and bent over to get a better look, two 9mm bullets screamed past his ear: then a third slug ripped into his abdomen, coming within a hair's breadth of severing his aorta.
"As the Holy Father lost consciousness, he was heard to whisper in Polish, 'Mary, my Mother ...'. It was 5:17 p.m., the exact time at which Karol Wojtyla had been elected to the papal throne on October 16, 1978. Inexplicably, his ambulance was directed to the more distant of the two local hospitals, causing him to lose three-quarters of the blood in his body -- fully six pints -- by the time he arrived at Polyclinico Gemelli, where he was administered last rites before surgery. In the massive transfusions which followed, the Pontiff would be infected with hepatitis from a tainted supply of blood mistakenly used by the doctors."
     - "The Secrets of Fatima"

FATIMA, Portugal (CNN) May 13, 2000 -- After years of speculation, including fears that the third vision told of apocalypse, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said that the "third part of the secret of Fatima" speaks of a "bishop clothed in white" who "falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire." The Vatican believes the prophecy refers to the attempted assassination of John Paul, who was shot May 13, 1981 at St. Peter's Square in Rome. The pope credits the Virgin Mary with saving his life when he was seriously wounded by Mehmet Ali Agca.

"During his long convalescence in the hospital, Papa Wojtyla would ponder a number of connections between the two events, beginning with the correspondence of the date of the shooting in St. Peter's Square with the liturgical Feast of Our Lady of Fatima: May 13th, the date on which the vision of the Virgin had first appeared to the three young shepherds at the Cova da Iria near the village of Fatima 64 years earlier."
"...As he hovered between life and death after the shooting in St. Peter's Square, he experienced a 'prodigy' -- a vivid visual reenactment of Fatima's 'Miracle of the Sun' -- in the midst of which he had a vision of the terrible agony which would grip the Church in the wake of his assassination."
"When he awoke some days later and found himself miraculously recovering, the Pontiff's first action was to direct the Vatican's Holy Office to copy and send to his hospital room all of the accounts of the Fatima apparitions written by the principal seeress Lucia dos Santos. Included in the documents which arrived a few days later was a single sheet of paper, consisting of some 20 handwritten lines. It was the fabled Third Secret of Fatima."
     - "The Secrets of Fatima"

Here is the translated text of Third Secret of Fatima. as written by the surviving member of the trio, Sister Lucia, in January 1944, and released by the Vatican on June 24, 2000.

I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine. After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the angel cried out in a loud voice: PENANCE PENANCE PENANCE. And we saw in an immense light that is God: 'something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a bishop dressed in white 'we had the impression that it was the Holy Father.' Other bishops, priests, men and women religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on this way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other bishops, priests, men and women religious and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the cross there were two angels each with a crystal aspersoium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.

"In a commentary laying out the Vatican's interpretation of the secret, [Cardinal Joseph] Ratzinger wrote: 'No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled.'"
"When John Paul II visited Fatima on May 13, the anniversaries of both the visions and the assassination attempt, his spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said the pope had read the secret within days after assuming the papacy in 1978.
"But a top aide to Ratzinger, Monsignor Tarcisio Bertone, told Monday's Vatican news conference that John Paul read it for the first time in his hospital bed after the attack.
"Ratzinger explained that popes had delayed revealing the secret because of the fuzziness of the message and that only 'in the light of history can you decipher the story.'
"As would be expected, not all skeptics were satisfied. The Rev. Nicholas Gruner, who runs the Fatima Center Web site, said from Fort Erie, Ontario, that he had questions about the authenticity of the handwritten letter."
     - "CNN: Vatican releases text of once-secret prophecy"

Hyperlinks

·Prieure de Sion