Geeking Out with Papal History: When Was Papal Turnover Most Frequent?
What about that St. Malachy Prophecy? And the Guy who was Pope three separate times?
Pope Francis has been laid to rest, so let’s get to the papal politicking!
But first, a few resources for my fellow Catholics.
Why not pick one of the Cardinal Electors to pray for? Adopt a Cardinal!
I was given Cardinal Sako, Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldeans:
It helps to focus the mind to have a particular cardinal to pray for.
Cardinal Burke has also posted a novena prayer for the conclave: 2025 Conclave Novena Prayer - that was running April 26 - May 5
As the conclave was announced to begin May 7, Cardinal Burke posted an update: Conclave Novena Prayer Update
The Sacred College of Cardinals during the General Congregation of Monday, April 28th last, has set the date for the beginning of the Conclave: May 7, 2025. Given the gravity of the situation, I ask that those who will complete the Novena on May 5th next, immediately begin a second Novena, continuing to pray the Novena Prayer until the new Successor of Saint Peter is elected. For those who have begun the novena after April 26th, I ask you to continue praying the Novena Prayer, until the new Successor of Saint Peter is elected. If you have not yet begun to pray the Novena Prayer, I urge you to begin praying it immediately.
I thank all who have been praying the Novena Prayer or who will begin praying it now. We can be confident that Our Lady of Guadalupe will intercede powerfully for the election of a good and holy Shepherd of the Universal Church.
Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
April 29, 2025
While we wait for the elector cardinals to aggregate in their flock, I’m sorry, their college, to vote on the next pope, let’s look at which period of history had the most frequent Papal turnover rate… and its connection to the bogus “prophecy” of St. Malachy.
The True Story Behind a Fake Prophecy
First, St. Malachy is a real saint. St. Malachy Church in Manhattan has the “actor’s chapel”, being near Times Square. If you’re in the area, you should visit.
The issue is that his “prophecy” is a forgery:
Here is the article from Catholic Answers: St. Malachy’s Prophecy and Pope Francis
You may have heard of St. Malachy, but perhaps not for his holy life. He is a real saint, born in Armagh, Ireland, in 1094, and became the bishop there in 1032. He restored discipline to the Church in Armagh, and he died in 1148 in the arms of his fellow saint, the great Bernard of Clairvaux, a Doctor of the Church.
On the other hand, you probably have heard of the papal prophecies attributed to Malachy—a list of 112 Roman pontiffs (and anti-popes), identified by a brief epithet alluding to his name, family, place of origin or service, coat of arms, or some more nebulous identification. Proponents argue that the list dates to St. Malachy’s time, though the list was discovered—or published—only in the late 1500s, with no mention in the interim, including from sources one would expect to reference it—e.g., biographers of the saint.
Here is the interesting bit:
2016, National Catholic Register: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Prophecy of St. Malachy
A significant mark against its authenticity is the fact that it was not published until 1595, though St. Malachy died in 1148. There is no record of the prophecy existing in the intervening 447 years.
Allegedly, this was because the prophecy lay, forgotten, in a Roman archive, and it was not rediscovered until 1590.
This explanation is possible in principle, but the fact that we cannot establish its existence for hundreds of years until after its supposed author’s death is also consistent with the claim that it was a forgery composed around 1590 and then "salted" into the archive. (“Salting” is the term used for planting false records in archives.) It also may never have been in the archive but merely claimed to be.
Now, what was going on in 1590? Let’s check Wikipedia!
Um, excuse me?
Oh, and then:
You heard that right.
So, let’s say things were a bit contentious as one after another pope died.
First, Pope Sixtus V (yes, Pope 6 the 5th, very funny) died of malaria in August 1590.
Then, in September, Pope Urban VII was named pope after the Spanish king attempted to influence who would be named pope. Well, the guy chosen (partly chosen for poor health, yes, really) also died of malaria. After 13 days as pope. Pope Urban VII is the official shortest papacy.
Don’t stay in Rome in the summer before DDT — that was the lesson.
Whereas people tend to die old and in the winter (for their hemisphere) now, dying younger and in the summer of malaria was more common back then.
After Urban VII, they had to conclave again. The King of Spain, King Philip II, once again tried to influence the papal election. There was hot-and-heavy politicking. The anti-Philip cardinals did finally agree to pick somebody from Philip’s list… and he didn’t manage to last even a year.
But he didn’t die from malaria. He died due to an oversized gallstone.
The 1591 conclave was not as fractious as the 1590 conclaves, but Philip was still in control.
It was the October-December 1590 conclave that the bogus prophecy was likely attempting to influence. From Deacon Tom of Weird Catholic:
Why would Arnold de Wyon, or anyone else, forge such a document?
One theory has to do with the conclave of 1590, which ultimately elected Pope Gregory XIVth from among several factions. Cardinal Girolamo Simoncelli, a friend of Arnold de Wyod, was a papal hopeful. The prophecy motto for the next pope to be chosen at this time was "of the old city." Simoncelli was from Orvieto: in Latin, "Urbs vetus" ("old city"). By creating a long line of accurate prophecies from a great saint, the cardinal electors might start thinking Simoncelli was the man promised in the prophecy.
In other words, it was a conclave campaign ad.
Pope Gregory XIV is the one who lasted from 1590 to 1591 (the one who died from a large gallstone, not malaria).
Simoncelli was not the one chosen. Gregory was Niccolò Sfondrati.
While Simoncelli was in the King of Spain’s faction, he was not on the list of approved candidates from the King. Now, that could have made him a little more appealing to those who opposed the mandate from the King as a compromise candidate.
I assume the cardinals realized the forged “prophecy” for what it was, being used to all sorts of underhanded tactics.
It’s just we gullible “moderns” who have swallowed the story.
But back to papal turnover.
When did we have the most rapid papal turnover?
Above, I wrote about a time when 3 popes died in quick succession:
Two died in 1590
One died in 1591
That’s pretty rapid turnover.
Now, for a popes/year rate, we will not get much higher than seeing three different popes in one year. We’ve officially had 266 popes over approximately 2000 years, so that’s about a 7.5-year per-pope average.
If we take an inverse, that’s about 0.13 popes/year as a turnover rate.
That’s not evenly distributed, of course.
So first, let me graph a histogram of the length of papal reigns. As with my prior papal-related stats post, I’m using Catholic-Hierarchy.org as my data source.
Data Note: Pope Benedict IX - Pope 3 Times
There have been some rambunctuous times in papal history, and no, I’m not just referring to the time of the anti-popes in Avignon.
Pope Benedict IX had a bite at the apple 3 times, and is messing up the lovely stats:
Pope #145, #147, and Pope #150? That seems a bit much! The (#) means they left the position in a way other than death. Almost all popes did vacate the seat that way, but not Pope Benedict IX… he was special.
Yes, elevated to cardinal at age 10 and elected Pope at age 22. These are guesses, to be sure. Others claim he was about 18 when elected Pope — either way, he’s the youngest man to be elected Pope.
So how did that happen? Let’s go to his family tree!
Not the first nor the last nepo-baby Pope. TWO Popes were his uncles.
His dad (basically) bought the papacy for him, and through his young adulthood, he built such a reputation for foul behavior that he was driven out of Rome multiple times until they made it stick in 1044. Kinda. Another Pope was elected: Sylvester III
But guess who was back in 1045? Bad boy Benedict! He excommunicated the other Pope and was back in the seat!
But he decided to resign the papacy a couple of months later. Because he wanted to marry his cousin. Look, I’m Catholic, I’m not making this stuff up. No, he’s not one of the Popes Dante stuck in Inferno - Dante tended to keep to the Popes closer to his time, hundreds of years later.
Back to Benedict IX: he sold the papacy to his successor in 1045. Yes, that’s the sin of simony. Which, when Benedict IX decided he wanted to come back AGAIN, the successor was made to resign when he admitted it.
Was Benedict back? No! He was also out due to that whole simony & bad behavior stuff. A new successor was named (Clement II)… but he didn’t last long. So Benedict returned to Rome with troops in 1047 when Clement II died…
….and then it got complicated.
Anyway, this is all to say, I am counting Benedict IX as three separate papal reigns, though he was only one man.
The table above is populated incorrectly because of the code the website owner uses to do lookups, etc., to fill in the table values for papal reigns for Benedict IX, so I’m fixing it. I think I’ll email the person later about him fixing the info, but we’ll see. He may have a different opinion.
Histogram of papal reign lengths
To keep it simple (TOO LATE!) I am using either from when the pope was installed or elected, whichever is longer.
Here’s the simple histogram.
46 popes had reigns less than a year. 77 papal reigns were 1-5 years, and so forth.
Only 32 of the 266 popes had reigns over 15 years long.
Here is a more detailed histogram:
In case you’re curious, the median papal reign is 5.8 years, and the mean is 7.2 years.
Now let’s figure out when we had the highest turnover rate in popes.
Turnover Rate as Popes per Century
The simplest way to look at this is to get to the end of each century and see how many different popes ended their reigns that century.
Here you go:
Okay, so it’s really one more pope per century than that, but if you want to determine the average papal reign for that century just ended, you divide 100 years by the number of papal reigns that ended in that century. Easy-peasy.
You can see the heavy black line peaks in the year 1000, with 23 popes ending their reign in the 10th century (900 - 999) — there had been 24 different popes during that century. So papal reigns averaged 4.3 years in that century.
What’s that busy graph over the other one?
I did a moving average by decade for the same thing. This shows turnover in more detail, with the peak occurring in the year 980, with a value of 28.
So for the years 880 - 979, 28 papal reigns ended, averaging 3.6 years per reign.
Notice that we’re currently in a period of relative stability, averaging about 8 papal reigns ending per century, or 12.5 years per pope.
[Yes, it’s not exact, because usually one extra pope is around at the end of the century, reigning on. We’re not going to worry about that. This is about papal turnover.]
Pick Young or Old? Sick or Well?
How about… don’t get presumptive?
A bunch of people are currently handicapping the papabile and reading the tea leaves. For instance, maybe the electors want somebody old or sickly, so there’s a short papacy…..
I have more about Parolin coming up (re: Vatican finances), and perhaps more about Papal mortality… but for now, maybe let’s just calm down a little and pray for the cardinals.
