CARDINAL PAOLO Romeo of Palermo, Sicily, is reported to have predicted Pope Benedict XVI would die, and not necessarily peacefully, by November.
This seemingly far-fetched story was published yesterday by Il Fatto Quotidiano, a leftist newspaper which, while no great friend of Benedict or the Catholic Church, is a reliable news source.
The paper claims to have a document delivered to Benedict last month, outlining details of this bizarre tale, by the ultra-conservative Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, who claims to have received it from Beijing, via Chinese contacts and Italian businessmen based in China.
These informants told Cardinal Hoyos that, during a visit to China last November, Cardinal Romeo predicted the pope would be dead by November 2012 and would be replaced by Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Archbishop of Milan.
Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi and Cardinal Romeo both dismissed the story.
