The upcoming conclave to determine who will be the next Pope allows me to indulge in two of my favourite activities – betting and wild prophecies.<\/p>\n
Somewhere at the back of mind, I thought I remembered a prophecy that said if a black pope was elected, that would signal the end of the world. However, having done some brief searching on the internet (and having definitively ruled out my main candidate – the Secrets of Fatima) I can’t actually find proof of this. I have heard mutterings that Nostradamus was the man who made this prediction but again can’t confirm this.<\/p>\n
Far more interesting and (potentially lucrative) are the prophecies of our own St Malachy. Apparently he was given a vision of all the popes from his own time (1143) to the end of the papacy – some 112 popes in all. You can see a good review of Malachy’s papal prophecies here<\/a> but for our purposes the crucial fact is that the next pope will be “Gloria Olivae”, The Glory of the Olives.<\/p>\n After exhaustive research I can now confirm that this could only refer to Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. Cardinal Lustiger was born of Jewish descent and Jews are identified with Olives (Mount of Olives=Jerusalem). In addition the rumour goes that he was once rector of an Olivetan school (the Olivetans are a branch of the Benedictines).<\/p>\n (It has been asserted that “the glory of the Olives” could equally apply to Cardinal Martini, the Archbishop of Milan but this is flippant dissembling to divert the unwary).<\/p>\n As for actually placing a bet on the identity of the next Pope, the only site I can find which is currently taking votes is PaddyPower.com.<\/a> Sadly, this very morning they removed their 1000-1 option of Fr Doughal from Craggy Island. (If you don’t believe me see the original BBC story.)<\/a><\/p>\n Anyway I fancy \u00a320 on Lustiger at 20-1.<\/p>\n *** Stoppress *** Musing on the identity of the next pope<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonjnugent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonjnugent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonjnugent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonjnugent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonjnugent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonjnugent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.simonjnugent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonjnugent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.simonjnugent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNew psychic material delivered overnight has pointed the finger at Cardinal Antonelli. Antonelli has links with Umbria and one of Umbria’s finest winemakers is – Antonelli. The winemaker Antonelli (and they may well be related) has a very nice wine museum (which Lisa and I have visited) but also do a very nice line in olive oils.<\/a> Therefore, Malachy was clearly referring to Antonelli when he said “Gloria Olivae” and I hereby slap my \u00a320 on him at 14-1 (latest odds from Paddypower.com). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"