FACT CHECK: Claimed Prophecy About Pope Francis Is Bunk

A post shared on X claims that a Catholic prophecy says Pope Francis will be the last pope.

The alleged prophecy has been wrong about several popes. There are allegations it is a forgery.

Pope Francis is in the hospital, with double pneumonia, according to CNN. He has shown slight improvement since being admitted, the outlet reported.

“Not to freak anybody out but there’s a Catholic prophecy that claims to have accurately predicted every pope since 1590. It concludes with Pope Francis, who in most interpretations, will be the final pope who oversees the end of the world,” reads the post.

This is misleading. This alleged prophecy is known as Malachy’s prophecy, named after a 12th century Irish bishop that it is attributed to, per Catholic Answers. Catholic Answers states that “prophecy consist of 112 short Latin descriptions of future popes; the prophecies were discovered in 1590 and attributed to Malachy.”

It states that while “there have been a few good matches in modern times,” there have been many inaccuracies such as John Paul II and Paul VI. It summarizes:

“There have been many more misses, though. Describing the popes to follow John XXIII are the phrases’“flower of flowers’ (Paul VI), ‘from a half-moon’ (John Paul I), and ‘from the toil of the sun’ (John Paul II), none of which is an obvious connection. After our current pope there are only two left in Malachy’s prophecy, ‘the glory of the olive’ and ‘Peter the Roman.’ The latter will supposedly lead the Church through many tribulations, concluding with the last judgment. Is Malachy’s’ prophecy legitimate? Probably not. The consensus among modern scholars is that it is a 16th-century forgery created for partisan political reasons.”

Joëlle Rollo-Koster, a professor of medieval history at the University of Rhode Island, told U.S. Catholic in May 2024 that the person who discovered “the prophecies in the 1590s is more or less a fraud and basically wrote them.”

She states:

“The scientific community of historians, after careful analysis, decided that these are forgeries. But there is always something tremendously attractive in wanting to believe in prophecies. And you know, you can always find that link wherever you want, which is going to say, aha, but you see, for example, Benedict XVI, he says that there is a relationship with olive branches, but wait a second, the branch of olive, of the olive trees, is a sign of the Benedictines. So I mean, you can play with it. It’s a little bit like statistics and numbers. You can have them say whatever you want to a certain extent. But the scientific community, I’m sorry to say, has debunked the true character of any type of truthful prophecies.”

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