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 Leos vision. Wherever one looks, he observed, one may find this claim but nowhere a trace of proof....
- Writings which promote the story give no references to sources.
- The various accounts contradict each other as to where the vision supposedly took place after Mass at the foot of the altar, or in a conference with cardinals.
- The various accounts are inconsistent about the date of the vision.
- The dates the accounts give for the alleged vision (1880, 1884 and 1888) do not correspond with the date when the St. Michael prayer was actually instituted (1886).
- There appears to be no corroboration for the story in a contemporary account which one would expect to have mentioned the event, had it indeed taken place.
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 governments 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.
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.