Three favoured candidates to be the new pope could spell disaster for humanity according to 1000-year-old prophecy

A supposed ancient prophecy listing 112 popes ranging from 1143 right the way up until modern day has been predicting a terrible doom to come.

That's really the point of prophecy, isn't it? There's hardly ever any nice ones as it's largely a downcast deluge of doomsaying.

Speaking of which, the Prophecy of the Popes heralds some absolutely terrible times to come and it's all going to be the fault of a guy named Peter.

This prophecy was discovered in the late 16th Century by a monk named Arnold Wion, who claimed it had been written in the 12th century by the Irish saint Malachy.

It lists 112 vague sentences which are supposed to allude to the identity of successive popes stretching into the future, and now we've reached the end of the list.

Pope Francis is dead, soon it will be time to choose his successor (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)

According to the final entry in this prophecy, the following will happen: "Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End."

So that's very bad things happening for Rome, the 'city of seven hills', and apparently the end is nigh so we'd better not pick a pope named Peter, then.

Except, among the top candidates to succeed the recently deceased Pope Francis are a few who bear that name.

According to The Guardian, some of the frontrunners are Pietro Parolin of Italy, Peter Turkson of Ghana and Péter Erdő of Hungary, these are the three Peters in the running for the top job in the Catholic church.

However, Italy's Pierbattista Pizzaballa might also be counted since his first name is a combination of 'Peter' and 'Baptist'.

So if you're looking for your 'Peter the Roman' then it's likely to be one of these, though none of these guys are from Rome, and you should be wary of putting too much stock in prophecy.

The Prophecy of the Popes doesn't have much support among experts, who think it's a 'hoax' (British Museum)

The Prophecy of the Popes has been widely discredited by experts, who called it 'kind of a hoax' given that the predictions suddenly lose their accuracy as soon as the document was 'discovered'.

Experts reckon rather than it being a prophecy from an Irish saint, the monk who 'found' it probably wrote it in an attempt to help his friend become pope at an upcoming election.

It didn't work.

Scholars have also pointed out that this 'Peter of Rome' business doesn't make sense since pope number 111 on the list was Benedict XVI, the immediate predecessor to Pope Francis, which ought to make Francis the final entry on the list.

However, Francis who was not called Peter, didn't take it for his papal name and was from Argentina and not Rome, the final entry on the list but apparently he's being skipped over so there's really no way he could be 'Peter of Rome'.

So the prophecy has already skipped a pope, in addition to the many calls it got wrong over the centuries, and now there's some tenuous stretching being employed to make vague words written centuries ago seen prescient.