Is Pope Francis the last pope?

This is a very historic Holy Week for us Filipinos because we usually always attend Holy Thursday and Good Friday services. When I was still young, my favorite place to be was in Bantayan Island for the procession on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Bantayanons are also used to eating lechon even on Good Friday, but now I really don’t know if they can do this at this time.

We should realize that many of us can’t go on vacation this Holy Week due to COVID-19. Thankfully, we are all at home with our families, so I suggest we pray the rosary together as a family because as the venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen said “The family that prays together stays together.” It’s high time for us to realize the dramatic changes happening in the world today, which can only be called a cataclysmic event that will change the world in ways few could have ever predicted.

Last Sunday night the History Channel had a documentary entitled “The Last Pope”. This documentary pertains to the third secret of Fatima where St. Malachy predicted the last 112 Popes. He names each pope not by their names, but rather something that identifies them. In the case of Pope John Paul II he says he is De Labore Solis or the Labor of the Sun as he was born during an eclipse and buried when there was an eclipse.

His predecessor was Pope John Paul I who is De Mediate Lunae who reigned as Pope for only a month from a half moon to the next. Pope Benedict XVI was Glorie Olivea the Glory of the Olives and it was only when he accepted to be called Benedict and he used the olive branch to signify his papacy. Pope Francis is supposed to be the 112th pope or the last pope in that documentary. However it was the first time that a pope took the name Francis and was a Jesuit. But St. Malachy’s prediction of the last pope was named Petrus Romanus. So is Pope Francis the last pope? We really don’t know.

I already wrote an article way back in 2010 about what Italian writer Antonio Socci wrote when Pope Benedict XVI was still pope. It was then that Sister Lucia wrote the third secret. In her memoir she wrote, “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.” What did she write that led her to say about the dogma of faith will always be preserved in Portugal? Allow me to reprint what she wrote about the third secret:

“After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand; pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice, ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’

“And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark: before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting steps, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way.

Having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with its sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.”

Was she referring to Pope Francis? I will continue this for our Thursday column.