Bestselling author Tom Horn, featured on the blockbuster movie, “The Last Pope?,” told WND in an exclusive interview that the statements imply the man once known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio sees himself as part of a prophecy. Horn stated, “The comments by Pope Francis regarding possible assassination or retirement and that he may not be the pontiff much longer make me wonder if he is a believer in his role as the last pope (pope No. 112 in the ‘Prophecy of the Popes’), which speaks of the destruction of Rome.”

St Malachy’s “Prophecy of the Popes” is said to be based on his prophetic vision of the next 112 popes, beginning with Pope Celestine II, who died in 1144. Malachy presented a description of each pope, culminating with the “final pope,” “Peter the Roman,” whose reign would end with the destruction of Rome and judgment. But other Catholic prophecies also speak of the final subversion of the Roman Catholic Church.

As Horn notes, “Even St Francis of Assisi – the current pope’s namesake and one of the most venerated religious figures in history – gathered his devotees shortly before his death and prophesied, ‘At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavor to draw many into error and death… Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it… for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true pastor, but a destroyer.’”

Horn believes Francis may also see his fate revealed as part of one of the famous “secrets of Fátima.” “The final secret of Fátima was supposedly given to three Portuguese children, Lucia dos Santos, Jacinta Marto and Francisco Marto, when they saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary (Our Lady of Fátima) in 1917.” As Horn observed, “There is a great deal of controversy over whether the third secret was ever completely released by the Vatican, but part of what was released describes a city, which some believe to be the Vatican City. The city is attacked and many priests, including the pope (described as the ‘Bishop in White’), are killed by fighters who could easily be interpreted as members of ISIS.”

Horn said the events in progress may be something far more substantial than simply organizational changes. “Francis appointed Pietro Parolin as his secretary of state, an Italian (Roman) whose name is Peter,” Horn said. “If the Vatican were attacked or Francis and his Camerlengo (papal administrators) were to be killed at the same time or taken out of the way, this man would sit on the pope’s throne and literally be known as ‘Peter the Roman,’ the final line in the Prophecy of the Popes.”

In the United States, where Americans are used to hearing their president always invoke Christianity as a way to silence Christians, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent Easter message was moderately refreshing. Among other things, Cameron made it a point to say, “that we should feel proud to say, ‘This is a Christian country.’ Yes, we’re a nation that embraces, welcomes and accepts all faiths and none, but we are still a Christian country.”

The context of Cameron’s statement, it should be recalled, is a UK with a large, and in parts intolerant and aggressive Muslim populace - some among whom seek to treat the UK’s indigenous Christians the way the Islamic world’s indigenous Christians are habitually treated, that is, subjugated, enslaved, raped, and murdered. In fact, Cameron touched on the phenomenon of Christian persecution in mostly Muslim lands:

“We have a duty to speak out about the persecution of Christians around the world too. It is truly shocking that in 2015 there are still Christians being threatened, tortured, even killed because of their faith. From Egypt to Nigeria, Libya to North Korea. Across the Middle East Christians have been hounded out of their homes, forced to flee from village to village; many of them forced to renounce their faith or brutally murdered. To all those brave Christians in Iraq and Syria who practice their faith or shelter others, we will say, ‘We stand with you.’”

Consider what Obama - who is on record saying “we are no longer a Christian nation,” and who never notes the Islamic identity of murderers or the Christian identity of their victims, and who ignored a recent UN session on Christian persecution - had to say about Christians at the Easter Prayer Breakfast: “On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I am supposed to love. And I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less than loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned.”

This is in keeping with his earlier statements calling on Americans in general, and Christians in particular, to be nonjudgmental and instead to have “humility” and “doubt” themselves.

We live at a time when political correctness in America is wildly out of control, and thanks to Obama the US military has become one of the most politically correct institutions in our society. Things have gotten so bad that dozens of top officers that did not agree with Obama’s views have been forced out of the military in recent years. The US military is being transformed into an overtly anti-Christian institution, and for those of us that are Christians that is a very chilling development.

One of the key people that the Obama administration has brought in to advise the Pentagon on matters of faith and the military is a man named Mikey Weinstein. Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and to say that he hates evangelical Christians is a huge understatement.

The following comes from one of my previous articles…

The MRFF is a very insidious organization. It is headed up by a man named Mikey Weinstein. He has called Christians “human monsters” and “enemies of the United States Constitution”. Weinstein is convinced that sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ while in the military is “sedition and treason” and should be punished as such.

With guys like that telling the Pentagon how to treat Christians, no wonder things have gotten so bad. Obama is “fundamentally transforming” the military, and those that aren’t willing to go along are being forced out.

Netanyahu also took the opportunity to reiterate his opposition to a framework agreement reached between the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) with Iran, designed to curb the Islamic Republic's nuclear program so that it will not be able to use it for military purposes.

"Instead of demanding Iran significantly dismantle its nuclear capabilities and conditioning lifting sanctions on it ending its aggressions, the world powers are retreating, leaving Iran with nuclear capabilities and even allowing it to expand them later on regardless to its actions in the Middle East and around the world," he said. "Has the world really learned from the incomprehensible universal and Jewish tragedy of the previous century," he asked, referring to the Holocaust, in which some 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis.

"The powers turn a deaf ear to the crowds in Iran shouting 'Death to America; death to Israel,'" he added. "The democratic governments made a momentous mistake before World War Two and we, along with many of our neighbors, are convinced that a bitter mistake has also been made now." Netanyahu has repeatedly railed against the framework nuclear agreement between the P5+1 group and Iran, which is meant to be finalized by June 30, leading to a lifting of longstanding economic sanctions on Tehran.

His latest comments came just hours before Israel came to a standstill on Thursday, with sirens wailing for two minutes to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps 70 years ago.

And all of this is part of a larger trend. In 2013, we witnessed the most volcanic eruptions worldwide that we had ever seen in a single year, and 2015 is already threatening to be another one for the record books. All over the planet, volcanoes that have long been dormant are beginning to wake up, and this is greatly puzzling many scientists. Fortunately, most of the eruptions in recent years have been relatively small.

But scientists tell us that if we do see a VEI 7 or a VEI 8 eruption today, the amount of energy that would be released would be somewhere in the neighborhood of a million nuclear bombs going off all at once, and such an eruption would completely literally transform our civilization almost overnight. The last VEI 7 eruption that the world witnessed was in Indonesia in 1815.

Just a single VEI 7 or VEI 8 eruption could fundamentally alter the way that we all live our lives in a single moment. Despite all of our knowledge and all of our technology, the forces of nature are still vastly more powerful than we are, and scientists assure us that someday the United States will be directly confronted with that reality.

In addition, government authorities have scheduled a whole host of unusual “training exercises” all over the nation. So are the elite doing all of this in order to prepare for something really BIG, or should we just chalk up all of this strange activity to rampant government paranoia?

In the end, perhaps there is nothing to any of this. Perhaps all of these examples are just unrelated coincidences. But then again, perhaps not.

Ben Enticknap of the conservation group Oceana urged the council to take emergency action, arguing sardines have been overfished since 2009 due to declining reproduction. He added that 90 percent of this year's class of sea lion pups were starving for lack of sardines to eat.

"The sardine populations have crashed 91 percent since 2007," he said after the vote. "We would have liked to see this happen much sooner, but now we can start to rebuild this sardine population that is so important to the health of the ocean."

Well-known Citigroup economist William Buiter says the solution to this backwards market is to rein in the appeal of normal currencies like cash – because it is “causing problems” for central bank manipulation: When economic conditions worsen, they react by reducing interest rates in order to stimulate the economy.

From an economist point of view, however, it is cash holders who must be reined in (not Wall Street or the central banks): Fundamentally, the ELB [effective lower bound] problem comes down to cash. According to Buiter, the ELB only exists at all due to the existence of cash, which is a bearer instrument that pays zero nominal rates. Why have your money on deposit at a negative rate that reduces your wealth when you can have it in cash and suffer no reduction?

Cash therefore gives people an easy and effective way of avoiding negative nominal rates. Never mind that it will only benefit those at the top, or that it will punish the poor and working classes – even in the most ordinary of transactions – while forcing the masses onto an electronic platform that can be tracked and restricted based upon rules from the top.

Apparently, that has been the agenda for decades, with plans to control the population through a digital, cashless control grid. Once that point is reached, cash won’t just be obsolete, it will be criminal. It is coming. The question is how soon will it arrive?

Italian police last night were investigating the deaths, which emerged from testimony provided by the 100 other asylum seekers on board the vessel. The boat was rescued by Italian ships and brought to Palermo in Sicily. Fifteen Muslim migrants, believed to be from Senegal, Ivory Coast,and Mali, were arrested, accused of having thrown the Christians from Ghana and Nigeria into the sea after the fight broke out.

They are suspected of being responsible for “multiple aggravated murders, motivated by religious hatred”, police said. “The threats then materialised and 12 people, all Nigerian and Ghanaian, are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean,” they said. The attackers were identified by other refugees, some of whom were in tears as they recounted the story to Italian authorities.

It appears to be the first case of deaths being caused by a clash between Muslim and Christian asylum seekers on board the boats that have so far this year brought 15,000 migrants to Italian shores from North Africa. Conservative politicians accused the centre-Left government of Matteo Renzi of allowing “fundamentalists” into Italy and called for a blockade of the refugee boats.

“Intervention is now urgent because what has happened is extremely worrying,” said Maurizio Gasparri, a senator with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party. “The Renzi government is bringing in Islamist fundamentalists and using Italian ships as taxis for potential jihadists.”

The huge influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa is putting an intolerable strain on a country that has been in recession for the past five years. Conservative politicians called this week for boatloads of refugees to be sent back to Libya, while the system of migrant reception centres is on the verge of collapse.

The government in Rome has asked regional authorities to provide 6,500 new beds for migrants who are arriving on a daily basis in Sicily and the tiny island of Lampedusa. But many regions responded grudgingly - some with downright hostility - saying they had no space to offer. Val d’Aosta, a small, mountainous region on the French border, offered to take just one refugee.

There was also a frosty reception from the wealthy northern region of Lombardy. “Here, as in Veneto (a neighbouring region that includes Venice) there is zero space,” said Roberto Maroni, the governor of Lombardy and a member of the staunchly anti-immigration Northern League. "We cannot be subjected to this invasion.”

"Liquidity is drying up in Greece. It is true," he told a gathering at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Mr Varoufakis said a conspiracy of forces was trying to "snuff out" Greece's Syriza government but warned that this could have devastating effects. "Toying with Grexit, or amputating Greece, is profoundly anti-European. Anybody who says they know what will happen if Greece is pushed out of the euro is deluded," he said.

The warnings were echoed by Eric Rosengren, head of the Boston Federal Reserve, who said Europe risks setting off uncontrollable contagion if it mishandles the Greek crisis, even though Greece may look too small to matter. "I would say to some European analysts who assume that a Greek exit would not be a problem, people thought that Lehman wouldn't be a problem. If you measured the size of Lehman relative to the size of the US economy it was quite small," he told a group at Chatham House. "I wouldn't be overly confident that just because the Greek economy is small relative to the size of the European economy that something like that wouldn't be a major dislocation. I think everybody should be a little bit concerned," he said.

Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's finance minister, said it is up to Greece to decide its own fate. "If they want to find money somewhere else, whether in Moscow, or Beijing, or New York, that's fine, we'll be happy," he said. "We will not help a country that refuses to help itself. If Greece wants the next disbursement of €1.8 billion, it must fulfil what is agreed. That is called the Memorandum of Understanding," he said, also speaking at the Brookings Institution.

Military officials and residents said al-Qaida fighters clashed briefly with members of one of Yemen's largest brigades outside Mukalla, a city the militants overran earlier this month and where they freed prison inmates. The militants then seized control of the Riyan airport and moved to secure their hold on the city's main sea port, which is also an oil terminal. The security officials, speaking from Sanaa on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press, said the leaders of the brigade in charge of protecting the entire area fled.

The group has exploited the chaos in Yemen, where Shiite rebels, along with allied military units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, captured the capital in September and have been advancing despite a three-week Saudi-led air campaign.

The rebels are staunch opponents of al-Qaida but are currently locked in fierce battles with forces loyal to Yemen's internationally recognized President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia last month. A Saudi-led coalition has been striking the Houthis and their allies from the air since March 26, but has carried out no attacks on Mukalla or other al-Qaida-controlled areas.

I believe there was a time when manures — like steer manure and chicken manure — were actually very good ingredients to use in the garden. But those days are long gone. Today’s consumer demand for inexpensive poultry has created a dangerous new world when it comes to raising chickens, and it does not even remotely resemble the picture most people have of chickens roaming freely in a farm yard, pecking on the ground for bugs and small plants. And the changes that have come about mean chicken manure is nothing like what it once was either.

Since these birds must reach a marketable weight in a mere six to eight weeks, they are pumped full of hormones, growth enhancers, and of course, antibiotics. When chicken live their lives confined to small spaces, diseases flourish. And in order to control the inevitable pests and the spread of diseases that could result, their environments must be sprayed heavily with chemical pesticides. Back in the days of our great-grandparents’ family farms, many of these chemicals hadn’t even been invented.

If you think of chicken manure from factory farms as still being a natural, nutrient-rich addition to garden soil, you are mistaken. By the time the feed (already unhealthy) passes through the chickens’ bodies, it has potentially been contaminated with pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella. Then it sits in huge piles near the fields where it will eventually be spread, exposed to the elements. Pollutants like arsenic, E. coli, and fecal coliform bacteria end up in the runoff after heavy rain or snow melt and ultimately reach nearby ditches and streams. And they enter more than just bodies of water; these pollutants can enter your own body as well, when contaminated manure is used for food production. No wonder we keep hearing about food recalls. They are directly related to this unsafe situation.

Some of us believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the risen Son of God, the Creator of the Trinity and the true path to heaven. Others of us believe that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. Some of us worship Yahweh as he is understood through the Torah. Some of us follow the way of the Buddha. There is also a more general spirituality.

So the question is, what is our goal here? What are trying to accomplish? Can we lead others to salvation who we do not believe are on the path of faith that brings salvation? Can they lead us? Pope John Paul II said ecumenism is the “duty of the Christian conscience enlightened by faith and guided by love. Jesus himself, at the hour of his Passion, prayed ‘that they may all be one’.”

But is this desire for oneness just a desire that others be like we are? In other words, is our goal to simply understand one another or to come finally to a single belief? While I believe what the Bible says about salvation, I also believe what it says about community with others. And since all truth is God’s truth, I can learn from any faith tradition that teaches the truth. The more we understand each other, the better we can flourish together on what John F Kennedy called “this small planet.”

The summit hopes to “help build a global movement across all religions for sustainable development and climate change throughout 2015 and beyond,” and to highlight “the intrinsic connection between respect for the environment and respect for people — especially the poor, the excluded, victims of human trafficking and modern slavery, children and future generations,” says the Vatican.

The one-day summit will also include participants from major world religions and aims to “elevate the debate on the moral dimensions of protecting the environment in advance of the papal encyclical,” the Vatican says. The Pope’s much-anticipated encyclical on the environment is scheduled for release this summer. Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, a top Vatican official who is leading the drafting process of Francis’ encyclical on the environment, will also speak at the conference.

This event is just the latest in what many are calling Pope Francis’s “green agenda.” He has become an outspoken advocate on environmental issues, saying acting on climate change is “essential to faith” and calling the destruction of nature a modern sin. He has vowed to only increase pressure on world leaders after his disappointment with the Lima climate talks. He is hoping that his encyclical will influence the climate talks in Paris at the end of the year.