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.
SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
This prophecy from Saint Francis always blows my mind because it details exactly what is happening now with Pope Francis. I think Bergoglio taking the name of Francis was no coincidence because Saint Francis called him out centuries ago in this prophecy. And this prophecy is not apocryphal but belongs to the authentic published works of the saint. Here is the fuller passage for context:
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 obey the true Supreme Pontiff and the Roman Church with loyal ears 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….Those who persevere in their fervor 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…Some preachers will keep silent 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 Our Lord Jesus Christ will send them, not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.
This sounds exactly like what is happening in the Roman Catholic Church today. Now, the skeptic will scoff and say this is "retconning" which is a shortened version of "retroactive continuity." All prophecies are derided on the basis of retconning as events unfold. A famous example of this retconning would be the works of Nostradamus who has a terrible track record for prophesying such that people who know better say that his handful of accurate prophecies are that way by pure chance. Are we retconning this prophecy of Saint Francis?Works of the Seraphic Father Saint Francis of Assisi, pgs. 248-250. PDF
I have read a great deal on these sorts of prophecies and the apparitions of our Lady at Ecuador, La Salette, Fatima, and Akita which are all approved tell of the same calamities that we are witnessing today. They are so vast that I will not quote them but will encourage the Gentle Reader to do as I did and go to Google for deeper reading on what our Lady told us. All of the prophecies point to an infiltration of the Roman Catholic Church leading to grave scandals, promotion of heresy, and persecution of the Roman Catholic faithful. All of these things are happening now with the sodomite sex abuse crisis, a heretical pope, modernists like the Jesuits promoting filth and lies, and those Catholics who adhere to the authentic faith being persecuted and shut out from what belongs to them.
As I write this, the Pan-Amazon Synod being held at the Vatican is drawing to a close, and it has not failed to disappoint. The final document is acknowledged by insiders as having been written before the start of the Synod. The Amazon Synod is pure political theater and represents the victory lap of the modernists. They own the Roman Catholic Church now. It belongs to them now, and they will do as they see fit as they wreck what remains of the faith. The faithful can do nothing except sit back and watch or maybe toss a few wooden idols into the Tiber in a feeble protest. I support that act of defiance, but it really amounts to nothing. The apostasy is happening, and we are powerless to stop it.
My critics will point out that this is not the true Church but the Antichurch as foretold by Fulton Sheen. I agree. Modernists are not Catholics. They may have the buildings, but we have the faith. We have already endured this during the Arian heresy. But the modernists now have something the Arians never had. The modernists have a pope. And that fact is what causes such heartburn for the faithful today.
Let us not delude ourselves concerning Pope Francis. The man is a heretic. He has said so much and done so much now that it leaves no doubt that he is both a formal and material heretic. If you are not convinced yet, give it a few more days. Francis will not fail in delivering even more evidence of the already obvious. The simple fact is that the current occupant of the Chair of Peter isn't even Catholic and was this way even before he was put there. Anyone who doubts the true nature of Francis is delusional.
Why do certain people insist on deluding themselves about Francis? That is easy to see. They cannot reckon with the calamity that what Jesus promised would never happen has actually happened. The gates of Hell have prevailed, and we now have a pope who is not only fallible but is actively destroying the faith of the Roman Catholic Church. So, they go to great lengths of logical gymnastics to deny that Francis is a heretic. It is enough to make a sophist from ancient Greece blush. Or, faced with the obvious, they slide into their own heresy of denying Vatican I and the doctrine of papal infallibility. Or, they resort to the ludicrous tautology that the pope is infallible except when he errs. The poor fools do such damage to reason and common sense that we can now just dismiss their ridiculous arguments and pray they figure it out at some later time.
The obvious answer to this calamity is the one Saint Francis of Assisi has delivered to us. We have a man not canonically elected raised to the pontificate. We have an antipope. So many wish to deny this obvious fact that they impugn and calumniate all those who even consider it as "cuckoos" and "tinfoil hat wearers." Yet, I prefer this lunacy to the alternatives. Either Francis is not a heretic, or our Lord is some sort of liar.
I have already looked into the matter and written about it here at the C-Blog. These are the things I believe. Pope Benedict XVI was pressured and threatened into abdicating. His abdication was only partial, half ass, and invalid which is why he still allows people to call him Benedict and continues to wear a white cassock and his fisherman's ring. There is no such thing as a half pope or even a retired pope. Then, you have the Saint Gallen Mafia and Bergoglio himself violating canon law in order to put Bergoglio in the pontificate. Then, there is the simple fact that Jorge Bergoglio was a heretic both before and after his election. These four facts or just one of them is sufficient to invalidate this pontificate.
Ask yourself a question. Does Pope Francis look and act like a true shepherd? If you compare Francis to the bad popes in history, he makes them look righteous because none of them attempted to demolish the faith and morals of the Church despite their personal scandals. Even if you compare Francis to the antipopes of church history, those antipopes are better men than this guy. There is no question about it. Bergoglio belongs to the Devil.
Once you contemplate or embrace the idea that Francis is an antipope, you feel something good inside. You feel relief from the scandal. Your faith is renewed, and you feel hope once more. You see Francis as being the culmination of the centuries old plot to install a heretic on the throne of Peter. The faith remains intact because we are at liberty to disregard the errors of this wicked man. We are left with enduring him.
I believe Francis is the scourge that God has allowed upon a Church that has drifted into apostasy. God has sent us a destroyer instead of a true shepherd to afflict us for apostasy. This apostasy is at all levels of the Church including the laity. Bergoglio is our punishment. The unfortunate aspect of God's punishments in this world is that the innocent suffer with the unjust. If you are familiar with the Old Testament, you see God following this same pattern with the children of Israel.
Once you see Francis as an antipope and not the Vicar of Christ, you can hold on to the faith pure and unchanged. You can remain a true Catholic. But what about schism? It is only schism if Francis is the true pope. And, if he is a false pope, you are in schism by thinking that he is the true pope. You are caught in a Catch-22 where you are possibly damned either way you go with this. But I think God in His providence has provided us more than ample information to draw the correct conclusion. If Francis sounds like a heretic and an antipope, then he is a heretic and an antipope. The sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd. Francis is not the shepherd.
What is to be done about this calamity? There is nothing you can do except pray and endure it. This mess will have to be sorted out and corrected by the legitimate successor to Pope Francis. Since Francis has seen to packing the College of Cardinals with modernist scum like himself, it seems likely than the next pope will be as bad or worse than Francis himself. He may even be a second antipope. I don't know the future on these things. I can only deal with the present in light of the past and the prophecies given to us by the saints and our Lady.
There is an alternative to this antipope hypothesis I present to you. You can become an apostate yourself. You can embrace modernism and "God's surprises" as Bergoglio refers to them. God really does will gay marriage and women priests and artificial contraception and abortion and pantheism and religious indifferentism. You can decide that the true church is not the Catholic Church but the Episcopal Church and work to turn the Catholic Church into the Episcopal Church. I am sure the Archbishop of Canterbury will be delighted to become the next Vicar of Christ. As it stands, that current Archbishop is more Catholic than our pope. Or, you can just skip this foolishness altogether and become an atheist.
The bad guys have won. Notice that I did not say "winning." The victory is already complete. We are now in checkmate. You can become a schismatic, a heretic, or an atheist apostate. Saint Francis has already warned us that those who remain true to the faith will be regarded as rebels and schismatics. I never counted myself among the Lefebvrists and the sedevacantists, but I am finding that their positions are becoming moot points if Francis is an antipope.
The bottom line is that the Roman Catholic Church is in total error and confusion now, and this confusion will only increase as time goes on. The bad guys have won. There is nothing you or I can do about it. When you are out of moves, this is checkmate. And, when you are in checkmate, only divine intervention can change the situation. God Himself will have to intervene. And, if He doesn't, then God doesn't exist. Jesus was just a con artist. And the almost 2000 year history of the Roman Catholic Church will be regarded as the greatest delusion ever perpetrated on humanity. This is why Saint Francis echoes the words of our Lord when he says that if these days are not shortened, even the elect would fall from the One True Faith. Those days are now here.
If you are looking to the priests, bishops, cardinals, or Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for some sort of consolation or answers, you are wasting your time. The bad guys deny the truth while the good guys remain silent with piss running down their legs. They are a pathetic lot. Yet, it would all be made better if Benedict would break his silence or if a single prelate would come forward and declare the Francis pontificate invalid. This is not going to happen. All of the prophecies said this would happen, and it is happening.
The situation is in God's hands. No one is going to fix this but God. And, if God does not fix this as He promised, then God does not exist. Because of Francis, your faith now hangs precariously over the abyss of apostasy and atheism. I believe God will deliver us from this calamity and vindicate Himself and all those who have placed their faith and trust in Him. Those who believe in God and His promises will not be put to shame.
What will this deliverance look like? It will look exactly like it did in the Old Testament. It will be violent. The modernist heretics and their silent enablers will come to a bloody demise. There will be murder and physical destruction. God used bad guys like the Babylonians as His instruments of punishment in the Old Testament. I believe His instrument of punishment will be the Musloid barbarians that Pope Francis loves so much. God's wrath will be poured out on this Antichurch of sodomites, heretics, and cowards. They will all die and immediately enter eternal damnation. The Great Apostasy will end in the Great Chastisement as foretold. The rest of the world will be left shocked and amazed at the spectacle and know without doubt that God exists.
But I may be completely wrong on these things. I may just have a fevered imagination burning underneath a tinfoil hat. If this is the case, the Amazon Synod will produce a document that Francis will use to ordain female deacons and allow married priests at a minimum. These will only be stepping stones to the next round of "God's surprises" which will be women priests and openly gay clergy in sodomite pseudo-marriages and civil unions like they do in the Episcopal Church. And the apostate laity will be free to live openly the sinful lives they live in secret. The Roman Catholic Church will empty out and become a sad relic of a superstition that lived for way too long. There will be faith no more nor a Lord to return to find the faith gone. Unless God intervenes, this outcome is inevitable.
I have already been an atheist, and I don't care to be one again. But I prefer the truth above everything else. I became Catholic because I believed and still believe that Catholicism is true. There is one outcome of this calamity that I know is certain. The truth will be known. Either God is real and keeps His promises. Or, He isn't real at all, and we are to be pitied as deluded fools who pledged our lives to a lie. It is all in God's hands, and this is a scary place to be. I believe God will vindicate the faith we have put in Him. We just have to hold on until that vindication comes.
UPDATE 10/25/2019: I just read the news that Francis has fished his idols from the Tiber and intends to display them at the closing Mass of the Amazon Synod on Sunday. This may be disappointing news to many faithful but not to me. This man is a manifest heretic and an antipope. Now, he will glory in his antipathy for Christ, His Church, and the One True Faith. I am grateful that this has happened because it establishes even more fully what I have come to believe about this man. Francis is growing ripe in his sins. When his fall comes followed by his eternal damnation, let no one say that he did not deserve what he had coming to him.
I do not expect Francis to show any restraint going forward. He will probably go for the jugular and ordain women as priests now. Forget about women deacons. But that will be good, too. No doubt will be left when it comes to this man. He is not the true pope. The true pope is cowering in fear somewhere in the Vatican.
