Pope Francis - will he retire?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

wouldn't his retirement void Saint Malachy's prophecy tho? then the world will never end

Based.

Anyway, it's possible. It's also possible the tea leaves are being misread. The Vatican is remarkably opaque even for an old, powerful, Italian bureaucracy, and we're at a point where there are plausible arguments to be made both for and against a "mission accomplished" read on the Francis pontificate.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

And if he doesn't?

If he doesn't then we'll just have a physically decrepit Pope for a while, which isn’t unheard of; John Paul II's Parkinson's was, towards the end, much worse than Francis's mobility issues are now.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think having a Pope Emeritus is weird enough for people in the Vatican--having two is a different story. Add that to the fact that contrary to the Pope movie, I'm pretty sure Francis and Benedict dislike each other and may not want to spend their last years sharing Papal spaces or splitting whatever homes the Pope's estate would give to them.

The Two Popes was obviously a work of fiction, but Francis & Benedict already live in adjacent proximity to each other & are said to be on legitimately good & friendly terms with one another, so I don't see that being a part of the consideration. (The weirdness of having 3 living Popes at once, on the other hand...)

Is this part actually true, though? Cause the things I've read imply otherwise. Though it's possible that Benedict's people and Francis's people are the ones that genuinely despise one another, and not the two Popes themselves

That is the case.