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To: Viva Christo Rey
The prayer is referring to the invasion of Rome by the Italian nationalists under Victor Emmanuel. It is not a prophecy, especially not of the Apostolic See becoming occupied by the Antichrist.

See Fr. Anthony Cekada's article Russia and the Leonine Prayers:

In 1934 a German writer, Father Bers, investigated the origins of the story of Leo’s vision. “Wherever one looks,” he observed, “one may find this claim — but nowhere a trace of proof.”...

These considerations all tend to support the conclusion Father Bers arrived at in the 1930s: “that the ‘vision’ had been invented in later times for some reason,” and that the story was simply feeding upon itself.

...

To sum up, then: The lengthy 1888 prayer to St. Michael was composed after the St. Michael prayer in the Leonine Prayers appeared. The passages in the 1888 text which are supposedly “prophetic” refer in fact to the Italian government’s seizure of Church property. Once the King of Italy appeared willing to arrive at a settlement of the Roman Question, the Vatican dropped from the prayer passages which he and the Italian government would have found offensive.


65 posted on 04/04/2004 1:40:21 PM PDT by gbcdoj
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To: gbcdoj
That's not at all what happened. The Pope was made to see a vision of Satan arguing with Jesus that he could desroy His Church as he argued with God that he could turn Job away from Him. Jesus gave him the 20th century and increased power to attack the Church. That was the original prayer written by Pope Leo XIII after the vision. The Church cut it down twice after the Pope died, then jst unofficially let go of it after VII, and the devastation began to fester after that.

Perhaps Fathers Bers and Cekada had an agenda. Perhaps they are two of the ones referred to in the original prayer. At any rate, it is a good prayer. And it is a long and improbable stretch to conclude that Leo XIII indicated an antichrist would occupy the Chair of Peter. The prayer said the evil ones would TRY to do that, not that they would succeed. If Pope Leo thought that, he surely would have written a more desperate prayer.
70 posted on 04/04/2004 2:28:20 PM PDT by broadsword (The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for Democrats to get elected.)
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To: gbcdoj; Canticle_of_Deborah
Pope Leo XIII: "In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered."

Pope Paul IV: "Remembering also that, where danger is greater, it must more fully and more diligently be counteracted, We have been concerned lest false prophets or others, even if they have only secular jurisdiction, should wretchedly ensnare the souls of the simple, and drag with them into perdition, destruction and damnation countless peoples committed to their care and rule, either in spiritual or in temporal matters; and We have been concerned also lest it may befall Us to see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by the prophet Daniel, in the holy place."

Both true Popes knew exactly of what they spoke - and both spoke of the same: the antichrist.

82 posted on 04/04/2004 4:38:01 PM PDT by Viva Christo Rey
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