I saw this on Ignis Ardens and was curious if anyone heard of it before and what they thought.  Since there weren't many comments there, I was hoping to hear more about it.




The Prophecy of St. Francis

Shortly before he died, St. Francis of Assisi called together his followers and warned them of the coming troubles, saying:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. Those who preserve in 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, [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 rather than consent to falsehood and perfidy.

7. 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."

According to a poster on Fisheaters 18 months ago.

Yeah, this is an interesting one. I think it's easy to jump to the conclusion that it relates to our time--I admit doing so the first time I read it. However, looking at it more closely, the relative immediacy of it as well as the parts about people being put to death made me think of the schism under the anti-pope Clement VII, known as "the Executioner" for certain massacres he carried out. So I actually looked this up in the book cited in the OP and, sure enough, there is a footnote that says. "Mark of Lisbon and others think that this prophecy received its accomplishment in the great schism which desolated the Church after the election of Urban VI in the year 1378." (Urban VI's contentious election was opposed by the antipope Clement VII). The same footnote does note however that it could refer also refer to some future event.

However, there may be an issue with the reliability of this prophesy in general. The intro to the book in the OP says this book is a translation for devotional purposes of Luke Wadding's compilation published in 1650 (technically it is a translation of an 1848 German translation of Wadding's work). The problem is, according to Fr. Paschal Robinson's introduction to his 1905 translation of St. Francis' works, the Wadding work contains spurious texts found in second-hand sources. Robinson specifically mentions Mark of Lisbon's compilation as being especially problematic in this regard.

The biggest offender in regards to producing spurious material were the Spirituals, a grouping of heretical sects of Franciscans (including the Fraticelli, Celestines, etc.)--this text may be from them given specific events of their history. Unfortunately, after St. Bonaventure's death, the Franciscan order became a mess with a lot of division. The Spirituals accused the Franciscan order of betraying their rule and the Church at large for abandoning the Gospel. After certain controversies with Rome, under St. Celestine V's reign they were actually given permission to do what they wanted without interference. When he resigned, Boniface VIII was elected and papal opposition to their order was renewed and they were excommunicated. They in turn rejected his rise to the papal throne as uncanonical. From his election through the papacy of John XXII, who definitively condemned their heresy that absolute poverty was necessary for sanctity and that the Church could not own property (and who they called a heretic and antichrist), severe measures were taken to stamp them out, the Dominicans playing an important role in this as inquisitors. A relative many were burned at the stake during this period.

The prophesy in the OP fits these events (if the events are viewed from the Spirituals' point of view) pretty much exactly. There was a major split in the Franciscan Order. They were considered schismatic and heretical when they believed it was the mainstream Order and Church who had fallen into error. They were "persecuted" by a Pope elected under unusual circuмstances (which they expressly declared uncanonical) and by another who they called antichirst, and they were put to death by the authorities as a result of their resistance. This gives me a suspicion that some Spiritual may have concocted this prophecy to legitimize their actions--it just fits too perfectly.

Whomever can't give you anything.  You could give something to whomever.

Whoever would be the one who gave you something.

Ahem.  Franciscan Order speaking:

A split in the Order of Our Holy Patriarch St. Francis?  A bit of an understatement.  In those days Christendom was ALMOST rent asunder by the intense quarrels among my brother Franciscans, but the prayers of the saints prevented the impending calamity.  That potential rending was the Babylonian Captivity of the Popes in Avignon, France that was prevented from truly splitting Christendom by the election of Pope John XXII in 1316.  During his long pontificate the good Pope John XXII vigorously cracked the whip of right proper ROMAN discipline and restored law and order among my beloved Franciscan brotherhood.

The authenticity of this prophecy is above reproach:  Luke Wadding is emphatically the OFFICIAL historian of our Order.  Within the Order his scholarship is never considered "spurious" because he is THE historian of the Franciscan Order.  Which leads us to a very great problem.

This problem is that there were Franciscan Spirituals and there were Franciscan Spirituals.  Some good and some bad!  Essentially those Spirituals who were also known as the "Zelanti" were most orthodox and within the mainstream Establishment of our Roman Catholic Church and world.  Those Spirituals who became known as the "Fraticelli" were quite another matter:  heretics to be rooted out with fire and sword, as they then soon were.

So, as Father Luke Wadding's work, this prophecy unquestionably enjoys the official sanction of the Franciscan Order.  The prophecy COULD HAVE applied to the early days of the Avignon Papacy, or to the beginning of the Great Western Schism, but clearly the prophesied lapse of the Papacy did not occur in those times.  Most thankfully.  Instead, this prophecy unquestionably does indeed refer to recent times and the "mystic death" of the Church that occurred during the Robber Assembly of the so-called "Second Vatican Council."  That we are now living through the End Times of Holy Mother Church, according to the prophecies of St. Francis, Our Lady of Salette, Pope Leo XIII and Pope St. Pius X, should be beyond doubt for any intelligent contemporary Roman Catholic of any description.

Therefore we can see that the "Franciscan Spiritual" problem has returned among us with a great vengeance.  Who are now the true Franciscan "Zelanti" and who the false "Fraticelli"?  Perhaps the true answer to this crucial question can be found in the following words of the good Father Basilio Meramo, recently translated from the Spanish by myself:

"This makes us recall what was stated in the suppressed passage of the exorcism of Pope Leo XIII:  There where is constituted the blessed Seat of Peter and the Cathedra of the truth for the light of the Gentiles, there shall be put the throne of the abomination in its impiety; for when the Pastor is beaten, they must also annihilate the flock."  This is also what was proclaimed by Our Lady of Salette when she said:  "The Church will be eclipsed" and that "Rome shall lose the faith and be the seat of the Anti-Christ."  This also concurs with what Pope St. Pius X said referring to the mission of the Church and her sacred duty of maintaining on this earth the doctrine of truth and its empire:  "When this doctrine can no longer be kept incorruptible and the empire of truth is no longer possible in this world, then the Son of God shall appear a second time.  But until that last day, we must keep the sacred deposit intact and repeat the glorious declaration of St. Hilary:  "Better to die in this century than to corrupt the chastity of truth."  (Pius X, Jerome Dal-Gal, 1953, p. 107-108).  Moreover we can say, in the same sense:  better to die in this century than corrupt the immaculate virginity of truth.  This is what today and since the pernicious Second Vatican Council constitutes the abomination of desolation in the Sacred Place (the Church), and therefore the Sacred Scriptures speak of the Church reduced to a small flock (pusillus grex) in Saint Luke 12:32.

As we may appreciate in the words of St. Pius X the mysterious obstacle (the katejon) is unveiled and the Anti-Christ must be made manifest.  From his wise words there flows forth, whether a fountain of fresh and pure water, whether the mysterious and famous obstacle, and thereby the empire of truth is maintained by the Church.  Since this is what is revealed in his words."

As indicated by the above words of Fr. Meramo and this holy prophecy of St. Francis of Assisi, the Papacy of Rome is now lapsed!  Those Franciscans who, with cold hearts, are indifferent to this unprecedented tragedy, those ones are the heretical "Fratecelli" of our own day.  Those Franciscans who care enough about the Papacy to take note of its horrible destruction are the orthodox "Zelanti" of our time.  Our Holy Father Pope Pius XII was shamefully murdered by the Soviet secret police.  Our Holy Father Pope John Paul I (a valid Pope at least in the humble estimation of this lowly Franciscan monk) was shamefully murdered by the American secret police.  The so-called Catholics who care nothing about such grave crimes against our Holy Church are the true enemies of the Papacy in our time.

In the humble estimation of this lowly Franciscan, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI are all of them apostate Anti-popes.  They are themselves the long-prophecied "abomination of desolation in the Holy Place."  Those who are in "full communion" with them are in communion only with the ѕуηαgσgυє of Satan!

Let us humbly await the appearance of Peter the Roman and follow him into a better day.  For our Holy Fathers still lay murdered in the Vatican, crying out to us for justice.  We are that "little flock" of the Apocalypse who, at the appointed time, shall most fearlessly avenge them.  And then, for us and for our children, the Golden Age of Mary…


Brother Francis, Franciscan Solitary

It's hard to trust such things, there are still pious forgeries.

This is why Hobbledehoy always scans originals in. I'd have to see an original print of this, as there is some interesting verbiage that isn't archaic, and is a bit modern/anachronistic.

It's nice to have something reliable to start with. If your source material
is compromised all the discussion in the world is a waste of time.

I recall seeing something like the OP somewhere, but I don't recall where
it was.

Curious thing about the scans of originals: when they're posted on the Internet,
you won't be able to find them using search engines looking for text, because
the text you see in the scanned images are not identifiable as that arrangement
of characters that a search engine can look for. Searches only find letters
that are part of words that are keyed in as such, not images depicting them
in scanned docuмents.

Iuvenalis,

Quote from: You

It's hard to trust such things, there are still pious forgeries.

This is why Hobbledehoy always scans originals in. I'd have to see an original print of this, as there is some interesting verbiage that isn't archaic, and is a bit modern/anachronistic.

Would this satisfy your doubt:
Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis of Assisi
See pages 248-250.

It does actually. It helps to begin evaluating a source, as more than an 'internet prophecy'

So, now we have a 19th century source, and can consider what authorities think of the attribution of this prophecy to St. Francis hundreds of years later in a 19th century text, where did the text source this from, etc.

Thank you!

I also know that there are more prophecies -- visions-- that Saint Frances was given, mainly the destruction of the Order and the renewal of it and with it the troubles of the future Church. Alas I read it in my "Little Flowers of Saint Francis" and I have lended it to a fellow novice and do not know where in the book I read it. I know, not much help but a search turned up a copy of the book here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/flowers4.htm

So at least there is another reliable reference out there.


On this Feast Day of Saint Francis,

Sr. Seraphia