Benedict, Prophecies Of The Pope, And You

Benedict: Pope On Fire

OK, maybe we can axe the "And You" part. It just sounded like a good title.

The recent news of Pope Benedict XVI resigning was shocking -- the Vatican had just installed his Twitter account, after all.

But it also brings up the topic of the mysterious "Prophecy of the Popes" -- allegedly written by Saint Malachy in 1139. The prophecy was a list describing each of the Roman Catholic popes, starting with Malachy's contemporary Pope Celestine II, and stretching out way into the future -- all the way to this apocalyptic ending:

not sure about that last part, but Benedict dead-on

"In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit [i.e., as bishop]. Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations: and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the terrible judge will judge his people. The End."

That was the description for Pope #268 on Malachy's purported list, the longest one of the bunch.

#267 is supposedly Pope Benedict XVI.

Of course, to many the ending of the Holy Roman Church, especially given all the pedophilia scandals surrounding it (ha, including my own Catholic School) might not be the worst thing to ever happen to the world.

While many have claimed to be "absolutely shocked" by the Pope's resignation -- for which he cited reasons of illness and old age (both of which didn't stop his predecessor) -- the writing has been the wall for some time.

...here's another for the list

For example, in May he had the "Vatileaks" scandal, in which his butler and "closer than family" companion Paolo Gabriele leaked a great deal of internal Vatican documents. These mostly focused on financial improprieties -- at least that we know of. Gabriele defended the leaks by claiming that he wanted to might "evil and corruption" in the church.

There has been, of course, increasing scandal over child sexual abuse and the church, which the Pope was reportedly in the "center" of. As recently as two weeks ago, a Vatican official newly appointed to investigate the sex crimes publicly thanked the media for exposing the scandals:

"I think that certainly those who continued to put before us that we need to confront this problem did a service. They [the media] helped to keep the energy, if you will, to keep the movement going so that we would, honestly and with transparency, and with our strength, confront what is true."

This level of acknowledgement has been pretty much unheard-of in the Church, which, along with Benedict, has notoriously dismissed these claims as not existing or being important.

Going back to the Prophecy of the Popes, it seems to me that a lot of the apocalyptic predictions (including 2012) indeed herald a death, of sorts -- a death of the Old Way. In a world that is increasingly waking up to the amount of child abuse and pedophilia that has been going on unabated, sometimes for centuries, the Roman Catholic Church's previous way of doing things just could not survive.

I expect many more important figures from entertainment, politics, religion, sports, and business to be so similarly exposed and forced out of office in the months and years to come; either for the actual crimes or the secondary crime of looking the other way while these crimes were going on. This is part of the overall Awakening gripping this planet. The center cannot hold.

The best way to make Popes, via R.A.W. (clip n' save):