I think that we are living in the time that will see the rise of the anti-christ. The 19th century saw the dissolution of the Sacrum Romanum Imperium for the first time in its history. The Roman Empire was the fourth world-empire predicted by the Holy Prophet Daniel, during the dominion of which Christ had to be born. According to most Church Fathers, the Empire was the power that witheld the manifestation of the son of perdition (2 Thess. 2,7). Through Constantine, the Church ascended the throne of the Cesars, and in the person of Theodose the Great, her sacred dominion was consolidated. Then God sent the Germanic tribes to purify the Empire from the remaining pagan elements through the crucible of fire and sword, destroying its Western wing*, until Pope Leo III blew off the dust from the Imperial Crown of the Occident, and placed it upon the Salic front of Blessed Charlemagne.
After his death, his reign became divided and as time passed, the Holy Roman Emperors increasingly placed their steps in the olden footprints of caesaropapism, making them willing instruments in the development of the mysterium iniquitatis that worked already during the time of the Apostles. God sent His prophet, Saint Vincent Ferrer, to preach repentance across the world, declaring that the Day of Judgement was drawing nigh. Many benignly succuмbed to the grace of his predication, but rebellion against Christ and His Vicar did not cease in the world, and God sent the Mohammedan Turks, mystical seed of Ismael, to overthrow Byzantium, reducing Greece to an insignificant country as the cries of its Emperor and his warriors faded under its ruins.
Then arose Luther, the fallen star, and opened the abyss with the abominable key of heresy in the Occident. He tore western nations away from the unity of the Mystical Bride of Christ, and drenched the earth in the blood of prophets and saints, all in the name of satanical libertinage. Protestantism developed itself into the 18th century rationalism that led mankind into the infamous darkness of the French Revolution, which dressed an altar to Astaroth, the devil of false reason. Europe was in revolt, and the Holy Empire disappeared into the chaos of this diabolical cataclysm. For the first time in its history, the Roman Empire had faded from the face of the earth, and the prayers for the Roman Emperors, which were offered to God since the days of the Holy Apostles, were removed from the Sacred Liturgy of the Church.
It was then that the world had entered into the phase of the general apostasy, foretold by the Apostle of the Gentiles as preceding the reign of the anti-christ, and this time period is yet enduring in our days until that most abominable man will begin the tyranny that will endure one time, two times and half a time (three years and a half). Then, Our Divine Lord will destroy him through the power and splendour of His Parousia.
Since the Holy Empire was the only vehicle destined by God to unify nations under a religious kind of European Union in the time preceding the anti-christ, and the resurrection of this Empire seems incompatible with eschatological truths, I think that the only way that Catholics can strive politically to safeguard the nations in which they live from becoming civilly subject to the anti-christ, when he will manifest himself, is to support local, healthy Catholic nationalisms that render their countries independant from international political unions. No Catholic international unions will be established, and existing unions will not be christened, but will merge with the throne of the son of perdition when he rises to power.
Perhaps that is why Divine Providence is allowing forms of nationalism to rise across the world, so that Catholics can strive to christen them in the hope to keep their countries civilly separated from the coming world wide satanical dominion.
All Catholics must pray intensively for the Holy Father, that he might convert from appeasing anti-christ worldpowers to opposing them. Now, more than ever, the sheep need a strong leader to nourish and protect them. All the Church Fathers agree that in the last days, the Vicar of Christ will either be put to death or be driven out of Rome. All must pray for the Pope of Rome.
* The fall of the Western Reign was not a disappearance of the Roman Empire, which continued to exist in the Eastern Emperors of Byzantium in an unbroken manner up to the restoration of the Western Crown.