The following prophecy is often used by sedevacantist websites (“no true Popes since Pius XII”) to help justify their position:
Act bravely, my Brethren; take courage, and trust in the Lord. The time is fast approaching in which there will be great trials and afflictions; perplexities and dissensions, both spiritual and temporal, will abound; the charity of many will grow cold, and the malice of the wicked will increase.
The devils will have unusual power, the immaculate purity of our Order, and of others, will be so much obscured that there will be very few Christians who will obey the true Sovereign Pontiff and the Roman Church with loyal hearts and perfect charity. At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavour to draw many into error and death.
Then scandals will be multiplied, our Order will be divided, and many others will be entirely destroyed, because they will consent to error instead of opposing it.
There will be such diversity of opinions and schisms among the people, the religious and the clergy, that, except those days were shortened, according to the words of the Gospel, even the elect would be led into error, were they not specially guided, amid such great confusion, by the immense mercy of God.
Then our Rule and manner of life will be violently opposed by some, and terrible trials will come upon us. Those who are found faithful will receive the crown of life; but woe to those who, trusting solely in their Order, shall fall into tepidity, for they will not be able to support the temptations permitted for the proving of the elect.
Those who preserve their fervour and adhere to virtue with love and zeal for the truth, will suffer injuries and, persecutions as rebels and schismatics; for their persecutors, urged on by the evil spirits, will say they are rendering a great service to God by destroying such pestilent men from the face of the earth. But the Lord will be the refuge of the afflicted, and will save all who trust in Him. And in order to be like their Head [Jesus Christ], these, the elect, will act with confidence, and by their death will purchase for themselves eternal life; choosing to obey God rather than man, they will fear nothing, and they will prefer to perish [physically] rather than consent to falsehood and perfidy.
Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.
(Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis Of Assisi, [London: R. Washbourne, 1882], pp. 248-250; underlining and paragraph breaks added.)
Sounds close to home, but where did it come from? The Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis of Assisi, published 1882, cites Annales Minorum (also known as Annales ord. minorum); written by Luke Wadding, O.F.M. which was written from 1625-1654. However, the citations from where Wadding got that quote are absent.
There were many theories where it came from, but recently in 2018, a Franciscan historian (Fr. Solanus Benfatti, CFR) wrote a scholarly 12-page explanation as to where it came from citing much more obscure sources, entitled On the paternity of a medieval report of Francis of Assisi foretelling a non-canonically elected pope. It’s an excellent read, but here’s a shorter retelling.
His assessment, to put it simply:
There is a robust and well-populated academic field of Franciscan historiography, which has been vigorous and rigorous for well over a century. And of the scholars who have made up and do now make up that field, publishing continuously in multitudes of peer-reviewed journals devoted exclusively to such matters, there is not one who has attributed or now attributes the contents of the report to the Poor Man of Assisi. Those familiar with academia know: unanimous agreement in a field is obtained only in the most manifestly clear matters.
He then cites the actual source, and why that is a major problem:
[…] We do not have to settle for Wadding, because we know from where the passage originates: an early fourteenth-century collection of sayings of Conrad of Offida.
Read carefully, whatever else we glean from internal evidence, the foregoing excerpts demonstrate the collection to be at best an anonymous, third-party assertion of not written but verbal sayings of Conrad about sayings of Leo about sayings of Francis. And those latter sayings would have been uttered about a century before any of it was recorded on parchment.
Does this “prophecy” accurately describe what St. Francis said, considering it was a written, anonymous account of verbal hearsay, of verbal hearsay, of St. Francis, over a course of almost a century? Not very likely.
It’s even more unlikely considering the political atmosphere at the time. At the time, there was a group of Franciscans called “Spiritualists” or “Spirituals” who were later condemned. The politics are very complicated, but to quote:
The story of these curious friars intersects with the stories of curious popes. Ubertino, many other friars, and the powerful Colonna family, will find themselves, for example, denying the validity of the election of Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303). Before his election, he, as Benedict Caetani, had been advisor to the poor figure of Pope Celestine V (5 July – 13 December 1294), who never had wanted to be pope, but rather continue in his eremitical life. After just five months, Celestine asks Benedict if a pope could resign. Benedict assures him it is possible. Celestine abdicates. Benedict then becomes Boniface VIII, and puts Celestine under house arrest. This has implications for some of the original zealous friars of the Marches of Ancona, who had seized upon the election of Celestine to get permission to live according to their particular Franciscan values as the “Poor Hermits of Pope Celestine,” but are now vulnerable again to attack. Around the beginning of 1295, they flee to Greece, in order to live their form of Franciscan life free from perceived persecution from their superiors. Despite the urgings of Olivi, friars such as Ubertino proclaim that Boniface must not have been canonically elected.
The story is lengthy and complex, but suffice it so say that friars holding rigorously these values, who, again, we conveniently lump together as the Spirituals, will have a tumultuous history over the course of the next number of years. It culminates, one could propose, when a number of them are burned in 1318 by Pope John XXII (1316–1334) when they will not accept the provisions he has made to settle the disputes between them and the Order regarding manner of dress and liceity of food storage.
John XXII was no friend of the Franciscans. He first intervenes in their infighting by dealing with the Spirituals in the aforementioned manner. Then he turns on the Order itself. John was a complicated figure, the infamous pope who preached several heterodox sermons about how souls do not have the beatific vision in heaven before the final resurrection on the last day, which he recanted on his deathbed a few years later. Happily, he is also known for canonizing Thomas Aquinas, although it must be admitted that he seems to have done so primarily to spite the Franciscans.
The times and the intersection of the Franciscan world and the papacy were complex. John will declare it heretical to hold the Franciscan idea that Christ owned nothing. The emperor Ludwig IV of Bavaria, in response, declares that previous popes had already settled that question, and John, contradicting them, is himself the heretic. Ludwig arranges for an anti-pope to be elected in Rome, the Franciscan Pietro Rinalducci di Corvaro in 1328, who gains little following and submitted himself to John in 1330.
To put it simply, the prophecy was actually against Popes who some Franciscans didn’t believe were authentic (ironically, early sedevacantists), because they were fighting certain aspects of the Franciscan mission and the beliefs associated. When the above prophecy is read again with that context, the debate about the orthodoxy of Pope John XXII, and a Franciscan antipope, the origins become much clearer.
But, I’m still doing the “So you’re saying there’s a chance” from Dumb and Dumber. Might be one in a million, but it’s not impossible. Just very unlikely.
Further reading / sources
- On the paternity of a medieval report of Francis of Assisi foretelling a non-canonically elected pope (free behind email paywall)
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