Malachy the Irish prophet? (1094-1148)

Malachy (1094 - November 2, 1148) otherwise known as Mael Maedoc was born in Armagh, Ireland yet became known later in life as a prophet. While in Rome in 1139 he received a vision showing him all the Popes from his day to the end of time. According to these prophecies, only two Popes remaining after John Paul II.

St. Malachy was reported to have possessed the powers of levitation, healing, and clairvoyance. While on his way to the Vatican to assume the post of papal legate for Ireland, he fell into trance and saw a line of papal reigns stretching from the successor to Innocent II and extending through centuries to the last of the line, identified as Peter of Rome. Malachy assigned short descriptions in Latin to each pope when he committed his vision to paper. These mottoes usually refer to a family name, birthplace, coat-of-arms, or office held before election to the papacy. Some of the phrases are multiple prophecies, written with ingenious word play.

Through the centuries, his prophecies have turned out to be amazingly accurate, even prophesying the date of his death. In all, 112 popes and their characteristics are listed from 1143 to the alleged end of the world, or perhaps religion as we know it, when truth is inlay revealed about human creation and destiny.

Saint Malachy's final words were: "Rome, the seat of the Vatican, will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people."

Prophecy of the Popes is a list of 112 short phrases in Latin. They purport to describe each of the Roman Catholic popes (along with a few anti-popes), beginning with Pope Celestine II (elected in 1143) and concluding with a pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", whose pontificate will end in the destruction of the city of Rome

The three secrets of Fatima

In 1917, Lucia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto claimed to have seen visions, the three young shepherd children from the town of Fatima in Portugal claimed to have received words of prophecy from the Virgin Mary and they were shown terrible visions of which they refused to share. Within three years, two of the children had died, and the third decided to share the secrets in the prophecies with the Vatican, with-holding the last of the three till 1943.

The secrets have since been released by the church, yet many people believe that these could be false and that the church has chosen to withhold the true secrets that had been revealed. The first secret is of a vision of hell, seeing the demons and the tormented souls suffering the great fire. The second announces that the war (World War 1) will soon end, but that if people don't change their ways that a bigger and more devastating war will break out (World War 2). The third foretells blood of many religious people being spilt and some point to this as predicting the attempted assassination of the Pope in modern times.

The controversy is centred around the third secret, as it was supposedly written on only one sheet of paper, where-as four sheets were released, leading to claims that the actual secret had not been released. People who had spoken to the author and people who had seen the secret referred only to one piece of paper. The Vatican did not help themselves as they held back from releasing it, as the author had wanted it revealed in 1960, yet they held out, making some guess at what it could have said and that it may suit the church to hide the real secret for some reason. Either way, we will never know for sure.