Malachy's Prophecy has become the topic of many discussions during the transition to our new pope. It's human nature to get excited about this type of thing during pivotal points in history. Some people get fearful, especially because we've lost a holy pope and we're not so sure the new one is holy. (I believe he is holy and will be a very pastoral pope, but he has a reputation as being harsh and he needs time and work hard to overcome it -- let's pray for him.) Emotions are high, uncertainty is scary.
Saint Malachy has been attributed to writing a set of prophesies regarding the succession of popes beginning with Innocent II, who became pontiff in 1140. According to his predictions, the line of popes will end after the death of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now named Benedict XVI. And then the world will end.
My personal policy regarding anything about the end of the world is to assume that we misunderstand it. Throughout the centuries, since the first generation of Apostles, there have been countless wrong guesses and wrong interpretations of true prophecies and many false prophecies and much hysteria. We must always be ready for the Second Coming of Christ but without causing fear and hysteria and without assuming it will happen in our lifetimes.
The Book of Revelations is often misquoted and misunderstood for the sake of "prophetic" end-of-world discussions. (See The Book of Revelation: Understanding Its Message of Encouragement.) We cannot trust what we read on the Internet, more so than we cannot trust every book just because it's been published, unless their sources are highly reputable, such as the Vatican and EWTN. (See what the experts at EWTN say about Malachy's Prophecy.)
Reputable scholars have researched the Prophecy of Malachy and dated it to the 16th century, because there is no mention of it prior to that time. Those who want to believe in the prophecy explain this discrepancy by saying that it was kept hidden for centuries. However, the prophecies, which consist of enigmatical oracles taken from scriptures, supposedly referring to each pope from Celestine to the end of the world, rely on symbolic terms that can be interpreted this way or that, made to fit every pope if we try hard enough. Most significantly, the symbols used to identify the "future" popes are highly accurate and on-target until 1590, but they're extremely vague afterward, leading to the conclusion that it's a 16th forgery.
Researchers further concluded that they were invented at the request of a certain cardinal who wished to have his coat-of-arms match one mentioned in a prophecy in order to get elected pope. Although he was not elected, the papal prophecies attracted much interest and soon became widely read, passed along to modern times with the prophecies of Nostradamus, who was definitely not Christian and is not to be believed.
This does not mean that we should automatically rule out the Malachy prophecies. A faithful Catholic is free to accept or reject the Prophecy of St. Malachy, as it is a matter of private, not public, revelation. We should not use the prophecy, however, to start thinking that the end of the world is soon. Not only is this extremely unwise -- Jesus Himself cautioned against it -- but countless testimonies of Saints over many centuries indicate that an era of peace will come before the end of the world -- and we've not seen this yet!
Even if Malachy's Prophecy is genuine, there is no reason to assume that we're only one pope away from the end of the world. The Prophecy did not spell out that there would be no popes between De labore Solis (interpreted as John Paul II) and Gloria olivae (if Malachy listed 111 as some say he did) or between Gloria olivae and Petrus Romanus (if he listed 112 as the Catholic Encyclopedia says he did). The Prophecy does not rule out imagining as many popes as we want -- and if it turns out that there are 1,112 popes before Christ returns, people will still be able to say that St. Malachy was uncannily correct.
We need to keep our eyes on Jesus, live today as if it's our last day on earth, and make sure that we don't live in fear, nor a distracting fascination with end-times, nor spread it.
