Fr. Malachi Martin warned in 1990: ‘We may have to face finally a false pope’

(LifeSiteNews) — The late exorcist Father Malachi Martin warned in 1990 that “we may have to face finally a false pope.”

In a private talk in Detroit during which Fr. Martin discussed the corruption and loss of faith among Catholic clergy as well as the Third Secret of Fatima, the priest predicted that a “false pope” would arrive sometime after the death of Pope John Paul II.

“So if (John Paul II) is snuffed out, we’re facing … or we may have to face finally, a false pope,” Fr. Martin said. 

“And he is sparing us that. I think a later generation will look back on Pope Paul John Paul II when he’s canonized and say that we did not know what we had by way of treasure,” he continued.

Fr. Martin acknowledged that there were questions as to whether the papacy was still valid, after he frankly described how the Church is “in shambles” and asserted that it is “losing all the battles,” although “we’ve won the war.”

“Is he really Pope? Is he really Peter? Is he really the 263rd successor of Peter, the 264th Pope? Or what happened? Has he lost his faith? Why isn’t he doing something about it?” Fr. Martin said, echoing the questions and concerns of Catholics at the time.

Fr. Martin boldly claimed that since about the year 1963, the Church hierarchy has been infiltrated by Satan.

“He’s doing as much damage as he can. But he has been installed in the structure of the Church formally by Catholic Satanists,” Fr. Martin said. This is the theme of Fr. Martin’s book Windswept House, which is a fictionalized account of the enthronement of Lucifer in St. Paul’s Chapel inside Vatican City in 1963. The novel also describes efforts to force a pope to resign, so that a successor may be selected to revolutionize the Church and help establish a New World Order.

Not even the pope can break the influence of Satan within the Church, Martin said. He went on to share that Pope John Paul II, contrary to common belief, was “bound hand and foot” in almost every respect.

“The Holy Father himself is rather helpless … if he wants to go to the bathroom, literally — I’m not joking — two men with sidearms have to accompany him to the bathroom, and wait there. He wears a bulletproof vest. Normally there’s two food tasters.”

“He can’t send a letter,” he continued. “He can’t write a letter and send it off to Al, Joe, or Patty. He can’t receive a letter. It comes to everybody. He can’t appoint a bishop. He must get five signatures for every bishop,” Fr. Martin said.

To illustrate his point, the priest shared how in June-July 1989, Pope John Paul II “wrote a letter to all the bishops of the church saying that they had to institute an Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament once a week with prayer, with the rosary and suitable prayers, for two intentions.” 

These intentions were “first of all that Satan would lose his grip on the ministers of the church, priests and, number two, that the Third Secret of Fatima would not be implemented.”

“Have you heard about that letter? No. Do you know why? When the Pope writes a letter … it goes to a man called Agostino Casaroli, who’s the Secretary of State, and he provides his recommendations on it and sends it to the apostolic delegate or the nuncio in each country, and he writes his recommendations on it. That’s choke point two. And he sends it to the bishop’s conference, which is choke point number three. And they decide what to do. In this case, they decide to suppress it.”

“So have you heard about it? No. That’s the Pope’s helplessness. He is not free,” Fr. Martin said.

Pope John Paul II had revealed that he knew the contents of the Third Secret of Fatima during a gathering with Catholics in Fulda, Germany, in 1980, according to Martin, who said he was present at the gathering. The Catholics asked if the pope had read the Third Secret of Fatima, and he admitted that he had read it twice, but would not divulge its contents.

He did share that punishments would come to the world that could not be averted by prayer, but that could be mitigated. The pope then took his rosary out of his pocket and told his audience to recite it, adding, “It’s the only protection you have. Say that every day of your life.”

Former CIA officer Rob Marro recently told LifeSiteNews Editor-in-Chief John-Henry Westen that Cardinal Augustin Bea, for whom Fr. Martin had worked as secretary, had revealed the Third Secret to Fr. Martin after making him promise not to reveal the full contents unless released from the pontifical secret by the pope himself.

The completeness of the supposed Third Secret issued in 2000 is heavily disputed. While it does not refer to “apostasy,” Cardinal Mario Luigi Ciappi, who had read the Third Secret, stated in 1995, “In the Third Secret, it is predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”

Padre Pio also spoke about a “false church” and a “great apostasy” occurring after 1960 in regard to the Third Secret. 

In this context, it is possible that Fr. Martin was referring to the Third Secret of Fatima when he predicted a “false pope” in 1990.

Asked about his thoughts about Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), Fr. Martin called him “a blessing to the Church.” 

“The excommunication is a joke,” Fr. Martin asserted. “No, he’s not excommunicated. You can only excommunicate unless you’ve committed a mortal sin. He hasn’t committed a mortal sin.”

“They can’t get rid of him. He’s growing and they can’t absorb him. He refuses to be absorbed,” he continued. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX bishops he had consecrated. However, now that the SSPX plans to consecrate new bishops due to a state of grave necessity, some commentators are anticipating the possibility of new excommunications to come from Pope Leo XIV.