April 22, 2025 - A. V. Rauf

Will the Next Pontifex Maximus be the Final One??

As many celebrated Resurrection Sunday aka Easter Sunday, news broke out that the Roman Catholic Pope Francis had died, and that the process of picking his replacement would soon begin within the next 2-3 weeks.

Pope Francis bore two titles as he served his 12 years in the Roman Catholic Church; Potifus Maximus and Holy Father .The first title was that that was given to the Roman emperor Julius Caesar in 63 AD, and the second is actually one of the names for God the Father in John 17.

John 17:1-12–hese words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:² As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.³ And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.⁴ I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.⁵ And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.⁶ I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

⁷ Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.⁸ For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.⁹ I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.¹⁰ And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

¹¹ And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.¹² While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

Pope Francis was worshipped by 1.4 billion Catholics, lived as a god but died as a man. The question that everyone wants to answer today is, who will become the next Pope?

When a Pope dies or resigns, the cardinals under the age of 80 gather in the Sistine Chapel for a closed-door election process called the conclave.While any baptized male Roman Catholic can theoretically be elected, the cardinals have overwhelmingly chosen their own members for the papacy since 1378. To be eligible to vote in the conclave, a cardinal must be under 80 years of age.
The cardinals vote in secret ballots until a candidate receives the necessary two-thirds majority. 

Some of the leading Conservative candidates to possibly be chosen as the successor to Pope Francis include the following:

• Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke of the U.S., who was opposed to Pope Francis’s reforms
• Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk of the Netherlands,, known for strong conservative views, especially marriage
• Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Sri Lanka, against LGBTQ rights
• Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig MIller of Germany, who also opposed Pope Francis’ reforms
• Cardinal PETER Erdo of Hungary, who is against livberal interpretations of Church doctrine

Some of the leading Moderate and left-leaning candidates include the following:

• Cardinal PIETRO Parolin, considered a moderate and against gender ideology and surrogacy.
• Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, politically left-leaning and supportive of LGBTQ rights
• Cardinal PETER Kodak Turkson of Ghana, who is against the criminalization of homosexuality.
• Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Italy, who is also modernist and left-leaning

The above list shares their view point and you will also notice that 3 of the candidates have the name Peter/Pietro. I will get to that in a moment .

One other intriguing individual that many Conservative Catholics worldwide are now demanding to replace Pope Francis is Bishop Athanasius Schneider (although he is not a Cardinal but eligible to be elected).

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, has raised concerns about Europe’s immigration policies, claiming it’s not a refugee crisis but a “mass invasion” leading to the Islamization of Europe. He believes this process has been ongoing for over 50 years, allegedly orchestrated by political elites to diminish Europe’s Christian and national identity:

A 12th-century ‘Prophecy of the Popes’ — reportedly uncovered in the Vatican’s secret archives — claims to predict the identity of the next pope and even foretells the return of Christ. This medieval prophecy outlines a series of popes and their reigns, culminating in a final pope who will lead the Church through great tribulations before Rome’s destruction. 

The document contains a series of cryptic Latin phrases, each believed to describe a pope, starting with Celestine II in 1143 and ending with ‘Peter the Roman’ in 2027.

Saint Malachy is credited with creating the Prophecy of the Popes, which features 112 short, cryptic phrases that allegedly describe each future pope until Judgment Day.

According to the final entry surrounding Peter the Roman, the ‘last pope’ will preside over the Church during a time of great turmoil, culminating in the destruction of Rome and the end of the papacy.

In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End,’ the last passage of the book reads.

While some incorrectly interpreted the prophecy as ‘Peter the Roman‘ taking over for Pope Francis during his recent hospitalizations, others believed Malachy was suggesting Francis himself would be the last pontiff.

Over the years, biblical scholars have focused on the timeline surrounding these future popes and when they would lead the Catholic Church.

Some believe the text proclaimed that it had reached its halfway point in 1585, after the first 442 years of predictions. This would make the final year of Malachy’s prophecy 2027.

There are many speculations about the identity of the ANTI_CHRIST —the uniquely evil, end-times world leader. One of the most frequent “victims” of this speculation is the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. In the days of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther and some of the other Reformers were convinced that the Pope of that time was the Antichrist.

Other Bile scholars claim that is very possible that a future Pope very well may perhaps the Antichrist’s false prophet as mentioned in Revelation 13:11-17:

Revelation 13:11-17—¹¹ And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.¹² And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.¹³ And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,¹⁴ And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.¹⁵ And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.¹⁶ And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:¹⁷ And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

I also want to mention in passing that the Vatican backs a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with both sides agreeing on the status of Jerusalem as part of the peace process. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state, whereas Israel has declared the whole city to be its “united and eternal” capital.

I am of the utmost conviction that we have entered a time when Satan will soon create war in the Middle East so that he can make “peace” and deceive the world! It means we are about to see Jerusalem in conflict, the Temple rebuilt and the nations of the world becoming supernaturally enraged against Israel like never before.

This also means that the Church Age (“HE THAT HATH AN EAR LET HIM HEAR…”) is rapidly coming to a close and the fullness of the Gentiles is fast approaching which also means we are close to the veil of spiritual blindness being lifted from the eyes of the Jews much faster as the Tribulation period approaches:

Romans 12:25-32—For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. 26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: 27 For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. 28 As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sakes. 29 For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. 30 For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: 31 Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. 32 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

Sad to say this also means that a great proportion of the church will fall for the multitude of deceptions that are being unfurled at a breakneck speed. Satan indeed knows that his time is short.

The ultimate authority is not Left or Right, or what I perceive or what you perceive. Ultimately it comes down to what is written in the Bible. 

Period. And regardless of what is forthcoming, God STILL is sitting on the throne of the Universe and when it is all said and done, not yours, not mine but HIS will will be done.

MARANATHA!

Bible Prophecy