| KARL KEATING'S E-LETTER
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DID ST. MALACHY PREDICT BENEDICT XVI?
ST. MALACHY'S PROPHECY
During the interregnum following the death of a pope we see a flurry of interest in the prophecy of St. Malachy. The interest seems to grow each time a pope passes from the scene because, according to some interpretations of the prophecy, the line of popes is about to end.
Since the Church will last until the end of time, and since Christ will not suffer his Church to be leaderless, the implication is that the ending of the papal line coincides with the Last Days.
Deal Hudson, the former publisher of "Crisis" magazine, titled the April 28 edition of his e-letter "St. Malachy Predicts the Election of Benedict XVI." Did he really?
Malachy's prophecy purportedly lists all of the popes from his time until the end of the world. Each pope is listed not by name but by a few Latin words that indicate a personal attribute, a symbol of his place of origin or of his family, or some other detail from his life. According to the list, Benedict XVI is the penultimate pope--or maybe not.
The confusion arises from the way the last pope on the list is described: "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."
What is unclear is whether Peter the Roman is supposed to reign immediately after the next-to-last-listed pope or at some indeterminate later time, with any number of popes serving between our present Pontiff and Peter the Roman.
But set all that aside. Consider the prophecy as a whole. Although Malachy lived in the twelfth century, the prophecy attributed to him was unknown until the sixteenth century, when it was "discovered" in a Vatican archive, where it supposedly had lain forgotten for four centuries. One problem is that none of Malachy's biographers make any reference at all to the prophecy. In fact, there is no mention of it by anyone prior to its "discovery."
A bigger problem is the aptness of the papal descriptions. Those popes who reigned between Malachy's time and 1590 are described with great accuracy. After 1590, the descriptions become obscure. In many cases devotees of the prophecy have been unable to explain how a particular description could refer to the pope to which it corresponds. Many post-1590 descriptions simply make no sense.
Catholic scholars, following the lead of a Jesuit researcher of the seventeenth century, say that the prophecy of St. Malachy did not originate with the saint at all but is a forgery worked up to influence the conclave that elected Gregory XIV. It would have been easy for a forger to make up descriptions of popes who lived before his time, but he would have had to rely on creative obscurity to describe popes of succeeding centuries.
Some modern-day Catholics put great stock in the prophecy regardless, based on what they see as eerily accurate descriptions of the last few popes. Here is how Hudson put it:
"The prophecy for Paul VI 'Flos Florum' ('flower of flowers') and his coat of arms contained three fleurs-de-lis (Isis blooms). The description of John Paul I was 'De Medietate Lunae' ('the half moon'). He was baptized Albino Luciani ('white light'), was born in the diocese of Belluno ('beautiful moon'), became pope when there was a half moon (Aug. 26, 1978), and died after an eclipse of the moon. John Paul II was prophesied under the title 'De Labore Solis" ('from the labor of the sun'), and indeed he was born during an eclipse of the sun on May 18, 1920."
There is less here than meets the eye. When we say that someone was born during an eclipse of the sun, what do we mean? I think everyone would say that if you were present at the birth, you could have stepped outside and noticed the eclipse. The eclipse would have been visible from the place where the birth occurred.
But this is not what happened at the birth of Karol Wojtyla. Yes, there was an eclipse of the sun on May 18, 1920, but it was visible only from a small portion of the southern hemisphere. No one in Poland could have witnessed it. See:
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEcat/SE1901-2000.htmlAstronomically, a bit more can be said about John Paul I, who "became pope when there was a half moon." Indeed there was a "half moon," but not on the date of his election. He was elected on August 26, and the "half moon" occurred on August 25. See:
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/aa_moonphases.pl?year=1978&ZZZ=ENDMaybe what was meant was that the conclave occurred during a "half moon." Okay, let's grant that, but then let's also grant that this would not have been a distinctive event. Although I have not bothered to look up each one, it must be the case that many conclaves have witnessed a "half moon," what astronomers actually call a "quarter moon." (The moon's phases are called "new moon," "first quarter," "full moon," and "last quarter.")
Each month there are two "half moons": the first and last quarters. You can do the arithmetic yourself, but it turns out that an average-length conclave has about a one-in-three chance of seeing a "half moon."
Another thing about John Paul I. Hudson said he "died after an eclipse of the moon." This pope died on September 28, 1978. An eclipse of the moon occurred twelve days earlier. Lunar eclipses are not rare: They usually occur between two and four times a year. See:
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEcat/LEdecade1971.htmlOne always can say that a pope died "after an eclipse of the moon." Everyone who ever has died has died "after an eclipse of the moon"--sometimes as long as half a year after, but after nevertheless. When we use "after an eclipse of the moon" as a clue to the identity of someone, surely we mean "immediately after." That was not the case with John Paul I.
Now let's turn to the current pope. The description that corresponds to Benedict XVI is "Gloria Olivae," "the glory of the olive."
"Guess what?" asked Hudson. "The Order of St. Benedict had a branch called the Olivetans," and the name chosen by our current pontiff is, of course, Benedict.
What does this prove? Not much, I'd day. First of all, the descriptions in St. Malachy's prophecy are supposed to concern pre-election facts about the popes. In theory, one could determine the identify of the next pope by considering the description that corresponds to him.
But this would have been impossible with respect to our newest pope. Joseph Ratzinger never was a Benedictine and never was connected with the Olivetan Benedictines. "The glory of the olive" would not have led anyone to suspect that it described him (unless, perhaps, the cardinal was fond of martinis, but I have seen no evidence of that).
Hudson says that "the uncanny accuracy of St. Malachy's last four predictions has fueled another round of apocalyptic curiosity." I would not dispute the fact that there has been plenty of curiosity, but I would deny that there is "uncanny accuracy" in the descriptions of the last four popes.
As I noted, the one that corresponds to John Paul II ("of the labor of the sun") is interpreted to mean that he was elected under an eclipse--which he was not. And the one that corresponds to Benedict XVI suggests his pre-existing connection with the Benedictine order, and he had no such connection.
(In fact, until the last conclave, believers in the prophecy said that the pope described as "the glory of the olive" would be a Benedictine monk. That's how sure--and how wrong--they were.)
What should we make of the prophecy of St. Malachy? I think we should come to the same conclusion reached by that seventeenth-century Jesuit scholar and by scholars since: The prophecy is not from St. Malachy and does not give us real information about the popes of the last four centuries and certainly not about the popes of our own time or of the future.
Until next time,
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