Year of three popes Year of three popes A year of three popes is a common reference to a year when the College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church are required to elect two new popes within the same calendar year. Such a year generally occurs when a newly elected pope dies or resigns very early into his papacy. This results in the Catholic Church being led by three different popes during the same calendar year. The most recent instance of a year of three popes occurred in 1978. The three popes involved were: There have been several instances in which three or more
Prophecy of the Popes (including punctuation and orthography) of the 1595 "Lignum Vitae", which consisted of three parallel columns for the popes before 1590. The first column contained the motto, the second the name of the pope or antipope to whom it was attached (with occasional errors), and the third an explanation of the motto. There are some indications that both the mottos and explanations were the work of a single 16th century individual. The original list was unnumbered. For this group of popes, the published text only provides names for the first three (i.e., those who were popes between the appearance of the