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Topics: Pope Francis, Religion, World News, Weird, Books
A near 1000-year-old Vatican text has claimed that the world will end in just two years, with cryptic reasoning.
On Easter Monday (21 April), the Vatican sadly announced the death of Pope Francis, aged 88, with his cause of death confirmed to be a cerebral stroke leading to a coma and subsequent heart failure.
While a nine-day period of mourning has commenced, which will see the pope's funeral take place on Saturday this week, attention has turned to picking the next Pope.
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There is no real way of knowing who the Vatican will settle on, though an old book called The Prophecy of the Popes claims to know not just who the next Pope will be, but also when life on Earth will come to an end.
Known in Christianity as Judgement Day, it is said in the text that the fateful day will arrive in 2027.
You wouldn't be blamed if you were sceptical, as we've been here before when it comes to predictions about the end of the world, from ancient texts.
The Mayans said it'd all end in 2012, while Sir Isaac Newton even claimed we would all meet our doom in 2060 - though we're still waiting on that.
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But when it comes to The Prophecy of the Popes, which was said to be written by the Irish Saint Malachy in the 1100s after a visit to Rome, the book that was found in the Vatican’s Secret Archives claims that the next Pope will be the last, as the end of the world is fast approaching.
The text itself lists 112 Popes, from from Celestine II in 1143 to the Pope that will succeed Pope Francis, all of whom are described through a cryptic Latin phrase, each.
There is just one more phrase left, and it reads: “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.”
If the book is to believed, the next Pope will be the last, as no future Leaders of the Catholic Church have been mentioned, with the end of the world coming and all that.
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Apparently, Rome, known as the 'seven-hilled city', will be destroyed and we will be judged on what may be the apocalypse.
While it terrifyingly states that the end will come in 2027, I wouldn't worry too much, as it's widely believed that the text may have been a forgery of the true Saint's work.
'Discovered' by Benedictine monk Arnold Wion in 1595, scholars believe that Wion himself published the text in the 16th century and have therefore written it off.
Pope Francis was called 'Peter the Roman' in the text, though Josh Canning, director of Toronto's Chaplaincy at the Newman Centre, said to Global News in 2013: "I don't know how you can connect Peter the Roman with Pope Francis."
The late Pope also wasn't originally named Peter, and didn't take it as a papal name.
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With that being said, there are some predictions in the book that have been linked to the appointments of popes.
For example, it was said that the 111th pope would be called Gloria Olivae, meaning 'Glory to the olive'.
While the 111th pope was actually named Pope Benedict, the Order of Saint Benedicts are known as the Olivetans, leading to some believing that the pope from 2005 to 2013 was correctly predicted.
It read that an 'eclipse of the sun' would bring Pope John Paul, who was the leader of the Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005, with the late pope being born during a solar eclipse in the 1920s. But the acceptance from many modern scholars is that it is forgery that was made for political purposes.
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Many refer to a text in the Bible, which highlights that nobody can predict judgement day - Matthew 24:36 reads: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."
Make of that what you will.