papal malarky

One of my sons has really found fascinating [though frankly rather unbelievable] a set of purported prophecies attributed to St Malachy [which one etymology links to the word Malarky]. It concerns the a succestion of popes the 111 who will be pope after Malachy's time. See what you think but some of them look a little contrived. For a start. like a lot of these things -see Nostradamus's for example- they are so vague that they're only really any use after the event- so no use as prophecy at all. And even then it's a bit forced. Take Pius VI, whose Malarkey tag is Aquila Rapax, where the only link to a 'rapacious eagle' is Napoleon Bonaparte who was kind of around for some of Pius's papacy. But Napolean was not the pope, I think ... And the interpretation of 'religion laid waste' for Benedict XV [1914 ff] seems tendentious to say the least, a Eurocentric view of the matter, given that worldwide religion was hardly being laid waste, but the Christian religion was expanding as never before. And in any case the interpretaion with regard to Russia seems odd given the RC context of the prophecies. Why this conern about the orthodox all of a sudden. Whatever next? Concern for protestants?
I also wondered whether the interpretation with regard to Pius XI wasn't a bit shaky.

Of course some of them seem quite good, which is what makes something like this credible and enduring. But then some of it seems wide of the mark. Much of it is so genral it is conceivable to fit all kinds of things to them. If you want to see how wide open the interpreations are without hindsight, just do a search on the prophecy of St.Malachy and see how many sites there are pre-election [do it quickly before the sites are updated] talking about a black pope or a Benedictine pope being prophesied. That'll convince you...
so
Move away from the prophecy, there's nothing to see here.
St Malachy's Prophecy of the Popes | Catholic-Pages.com