Prisoner in the Vatican the Basilica of St. John Lateran, situated on the opposite side of the city of Rome, and to travel regularly to their summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, from Rome. Prisoner in the Vatican A prisoner in the Vatican or prisoner of the Vatican (; ) is how Pope Pius IX was described following the capture of Rome by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy on 20 September 1870. Part of the process of Italian unification, the city's capture ended the millennial temporal rule of the popes over central Italy and allowed Rome to be designated the capital of
Prophecy of the Popes text c. 1590, and its publication in 1595) and provides no explanations. Prophecy of the Popes The Prophecy of the Popes () is a series of 112 short, cryptic phrases in Latin which purport to predict the Roman Catholic popes (along with a few antipopes), beginning with Pope Celestine II. The alleged prophecies were first published by Benedictine monk Arnold Wion in 1595. Wion attributes the prophecies to Saint Malachy, a 12th-century Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland. Given the very accurate description of popes up to around 1590 and lack of accuracy for the popes that follow, historians generally conclude that