So what DID happen when the Pope died?
When the Pope dies, according to Catholic doctrine, from the moment one Pope dies unti the moment the next Pope is appointed, the church is thought to be in a rare position of spiritual vulnerability, when its earthly protector and defender is absent, leaving "the gates to the kingdom" undefended, as it were. During that brief period, the church is thought to be, spiritually speaking, a little more unguarded, vulnerable, and exposed than at any other time.
What do you suppose might happen if the Antichrist (assuming for the sake of this argument that such a being does, or will, exit) obtained entry into the heart of Vatican city during such a time? Would the lack of a living Pope constitute some sort of spiritual "breach of security" that would allow the Antichrist to acquire influence over those living and working in the Vatican, thus providing an opening for him to place his own man on the throne?
George W. Bush not only visited the Vatican for the funeral of John Paul II (the first time any American President ever attended a Papal funeral), but even though Bush had recently had differences with the Pope, he made an ostentatious entrance at the funeral that some at the time compared to the haughty arrival of a victorious conqueror. While police were turning away an overflow of Catholics humbly trying to join an already 18-hour-long line of mourners waiting to pay their respects, an armed escort whisked President Bush and his delegation directly from Air Force One at Rome's airport to the Vatican for their very own private viewing. For someone often criticized for being too easy-going and taking too many vacations, Bush seems to have been uncharacteristically anxious to see the Papal corpse for himself, so much so, in fact, that he rushed to do so as fast as humanly possible. In contract, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans four months later, Bush waited two full days before finally bothering to go take a look at the devastation in his own backyard. But when the opportunity came to see Pope John Paul II in a casket halfway around the world, he seems to have been as anxious to go as a child to see Disneyland.
Considering how strenuously and publically Pope John Paul II had criticized and chastised President Bush just a few months earlier, this rush to see the Pope's corpse seems likely to have been inspired by something other than a simple urge to pay his respects.
Then just ten days after Bush's breathless dash to the Vatican, the man chosen to replace John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger, had the pomp of his Papal election besmirched by one of the most peculiar and grotesque natural phenomena ever reported : a sudden plague of exploding frogs. Cardinal Ratzinger was elected head of the Roman Catholic Church on Tuesday April 19th 2005, and celebrated his first public Mass as Pope on Wednesday April 20th, but he was not formally inaugurated as the 265th pope until Sunday April 24th. The same week he was inaugurated, a plague eerily similar to those imposed on Egypt in the Bible rained down upon Ratzinger's hometown in Germany. According to reports from animal welfare workers, veterinarians, and eyewitnesses, thousands of frogs mysteriously began to explode in Hamberg after swelling to three-and-a-half times their normal size. Like a scene from a horror movie (or one of the legendary plagues of Egypt), the frogs' bodies expanded for many minutes before finally bursting, propelling their entrails a yard or more. Since nothing like this has ever been reported before (science still cannot explain it) and it took place exclusively in and around the hometown of the new Pope and only occurred during the week of his rise to the Papacy, it is being viewed by many Christian faithful as a divine sign straight out of the Book of Revelation :
"And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon,
and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet,
three unclean spirits, as it were frogs: for they are spirits of demons,
working signs; which go forth unto the kings of the whole world,
to gather them together unto the war of the great day of God the Almighty."
- Revelation 16:13-14
Numerous high-profile members of the Catholic Church have warned of this very thing, that the Papacy was about to be taken over by the devil himself.
One of three shepherd children who turned the town of Fatima into a pilgrimage site after telling of her visions of the Lady of Fatima in 1917 (the year of the Russian revolution), Sister Lucy dos Santos died in February 2005, just before Pope John Paul II did. The three prophecies she received became known as "The Three Secrets of Fatima", and the last of those secrets is, according to recently emerging reports, that Satan himself would soon take over the Vatican.
Vatican insider Malachi Martin also insisted that Satan was taking over the Vatican. From 1958 until 1964, Father Martin served in Rome where he was a close associate of Cardinal Augustin Bea and Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. Martin believed that the Vatican had finally been, after centuries-long efforts, infiltrated at the highest levels by Satanists.
"Anybody who is acquainted with the state of affairs in the Vatican
in the last 35 years is well aware that the prince of darkness has had
and still has his surrogates in the court of St. Peter in Rome"
- Father Malachi Martin, in The Fatima Crusader
In his books, Martin described a ceremony called "The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer" held in the Vatican on June 29, 1963. Martin never recanted his claim that this Satanic ritual occurred in the Vatican, repeatedly insisting that the ceremony did occur and that a general Satanic conspiracy exists within the Vatican. Martin continued to speak out about these things until his death in 1999, doing numerous newspaper and radio interviews (such as "The New American", the "Steel on Steel" radio show, and "The Art Bell Show").
Martin quoted Pope Paul VI as bemoaning that "the smoke of Satan has entered the Sanctuary". Martin correctly predicted, long before the American priest scandal erupted, that reports of pedophilia rites and practices would dramatically increase among Catholic clergy because, in his words, "The cultic acts of satanic pedophilia are considered by professionals to be the culmination of the Fallen rites." (Keys of This Blood, Fr. Malachi Martin, p. 632). Since Martin's prescient warnings, tens of thousands of children have reported being raped at Catholic altars and inside Catholic confessionals, forcing the Church to pay out billions of dollars to settle court cases involving child sexual abuse by priests. In the Boston Archdiocese alone 65 parishes had to close in order to raise the money necessary to pay these court settlements. One case alone involved more than 500 child victims and a mandated court settlement of over $85 million dollars. Martin foresaw all this occurring long before it appeared in our newspapers, but his central message, that these acts are warning sign that Satanists are commandeering the church, has been ignored. His 1976 book on exorcism, Hostage to the Devil, leaves no doubt that Martin believed that the devil existed and was gaining strength in the world.
Martin is by no means the only modern priest to make this claim. A few years ago, a retired Italian priest by the name of Msgr. Luigi Marinelli claimed in his book Gone With the Wind at the Vatican that Satanic rituals have been performed within the walls of the Vatican. But far more impressively, the Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo also spoke out about Satanism in the Vatican, and took a lot of heat for it. Milingo is a very controversial figure in the church; he became widely famous in the church for essentially effecting miracles. In Europe and Africa he is recognized as having performed numerous healings and exorcisms. "Tales of [his] miraculous cures from cancer, AIDS and other terminal illnesses abound in Italy. Thousands converge on his services to witness people, reputedly possessed with demons, writhing in agony on the floor while Milingo conducts his mass exorcism ." (London Telegraph, 2/7/99) But his high-profile services were frowned upon by the Vatican, and even though Pope John Paul II supported him, he was censored by Cardinal Ratzinger, who banned him from charismatic healing sessions and exorcisms during Mass. In response, Milingo upped the ante, and began to publically declare that Satanists had infiltrated the Vatican. Milingo first made these accusations in an address to an audience of clergy and laity from across the globe at the Fatima 2000 International Congress on World Peace on November 1996. Since then, perhaps predictably, the Vatican has excommunicated Milingo from the church, but he apparently remains undeterred, writing in his book Face to Face With the Devil that :
"The devil in the Catholic Church is so protected now that he is like an animal protected by the government; put on a game preserve that outlaws anyone, especially hunters, from trying to capture or kill it. The devil within the Church today is actually protected by certain Church authorities from the official devil-hunter in the Church - the exorcist. So much so that the exorcist today is forbidden to attack the devil. The devil is so protected that the one who is the hunter, the exorcist, is forbidden to do his job."
Although the Vatican turned their backs on him, fellow exorcist and Vatican insider Malachi Martin supported Milingo, writing "Archbishop Milingo is a good bishop and his contention that there are Satanists in Rome is completely correct."
Of course, the best known Catholic figure to suggest that John Paul II's successor would be the last Pope was the eleventh century Irish priest St. Malachy. According to his prophecies, the line of legitimate Pontiffs came to an end with John Paul II. Canonized by Pope Clement III on July 6, 1199, St. Malachy undertook to list in advance the proper succession of Roman pontiffs from Celestine II to "the end of the world". Now, there is some mystery about just how many Popes were on that list, as two different lists exist, one with 111 Popes after Celestine II, and another with 112 Popes. John Paul II, who just died, was number 110. Pope number 111 is either the last Pope, or the second to last Pope. In either case, Malachy's prophecies strongly suggest that the current Pope may be the "False Prophet" mentioned in St. John's Revelation who is to deliver the church to Satan.
Are Saint Malachy, Sister Lucy of Fatima, Pope Paul VI, Archbishop Milingo, and Malachi Martin correct after all? If so, it is perhaps not so curious that Cardinal Ratzinger chose the name "Benedict" for himself when he became Pope. The worst pope of the Dark Ages, Benedict IX, is notorious for having dabbled in witchcraft and Satanism.
- Peter
http://www.divisiontheory.com/antichrist.html