Prophecy on Pope Fulfilled by Eclipses?

A 10th Century Irish bishop - St. Malachy - predicted every pope that would preside over the Catholic Church.

Almost ten centuries ago, Malachy predicted this pope would be noted by an eclipse of the sun.

In an eerie coincidence, John Paul II was the only known pope to be born on the day of a solar eclipse.

But the prophetic link doesn't end there. Pope John Paul II will be buried this Friday during another solar eclipse.

Story Continues Below

Astronomers say that on Friday, the day of the Pope's funeral, a partial solar eclipse will blot out most of the sun and darken a wide area of the world, from the South Pacific to the Western Hemisphere.

Solar eclipses are not unusual. But what makes this coming Friday's eclipse notable is the fact that there was a near total eclipse of the sun seen across Europe on May 18, 1920, the very day that John Paul II was born in Poland.

Adding fuel to the arcane speculation about these events is the prophecy of St. Malachy.

Malachy was discovered to have left behind a prophetic list of all future popes beginning with Pope Celestine II, whose papacy began in 1143 A.D., up to and including the 112th. The list includes John Paul and just two more popes who will follow him.

In his list of popes, he uses a single line in Latin identifying a characteristic of each pope.

The description applied to the 110th pope on his list - John Paul II - is "De Labore Solis" (Of the Solar Eclipse), which seems to add great weight to the validity of St. Malachy’s chilling prophecy: that the next two popes chosen to succeed John Paul II will be the last popes.

After the reign of the last pope, "Peter the Roman," St. Malachy wrote, Rome will be destroyed.

So this should be fun. The guy's successfully predicted every Pope up until now. You can give me all that postdiction stuff you want, but just let me believe this for a while.

So I look up the next prediction on wikipedia and get this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_ Popes" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_ Popes" target="_blank"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Following John Paul II, only two popes remain in the prophecy. The next motto is Gloria Olivae, the glory of the olive. This motto has led to speculation that the next pontiff will be from the Order of Saint Benedict or will at least choose Benedict as his papal name. Others think that "olive" may mean that the new pope is somehow connected to Israel, because St. Malachy is known to have used the name "Olive" for that region. Also, Our Lady of Guadaloupe is described as being "olive-skinned" as are the peoples of Central America; several papabili currently hail from that area. Alternatively, less specific interpreters have predicted that the next pope will promote world peace. The self-proclaimed Pope Clemente Domínguez y Gómez of the Palmarian Catholic Church claimed that he was the glory of the olive.

It's a little easier to see how these predictions can be interpreted in any number of ways lending less credibility to them. "Promotes peace"? Come on, he's da freakin' pope. Now this olive-skinned thing seem pretty likely. There's all that talk about a South American pope. I don't know if any of the Papal candidates are from the Order of Saint Benedict, but there's gotta be one. As for Israel, I have not heard of a single plausible candidate for Pope from Israel, so I'm wondering how loose the term "connections" is in this case.

So if we get a South American pope who takes the name Benedict who has connections to Israel, remember Saint Malachy.