Pope Francis spoke during mass at the Vatican in commemoration of the feast of Our Lady Guadalupe, and he spoke of “omens of even greater destruction and desolation.” He spoke in his homily of humanity being in “a bitter time, filled with the rumbling of war, growing injustice, famine, poverty and suffering,” but also stated he felt there was more hardship to come. He admonished the congregation to go against the oncoming darkness and “to get involved with each other without delay, to go out to meet our brothers and sisters who have been forgotten and discarded by our consumerist and indifferent societies.” Referring to Mary, he stated, “‘She wants to remind us that it was the Gospel that shaped the soul of Latin America and that as believers in Christ, it is our responsibility to be credible witnesses of the love of Jesus Christ and decisive protagonists in building a new culture.”

The Pope did not give out specifics of what he expects his congregation to face, but with the war in Ukraine, unrest in China, the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and financial crises, there are a plethora of concerns for the Pope to point to. His words also come close to the release of a Pew Research Center poll on Americans’ views on the end times. The poll found that 47 percent of self-proclaimed Christians believe we are living in the end times. Overall, it found that 39 percent of all Americans believe that we are living in the end times. 44 percent of evangelicals also stated they believed that the world would experience worsening conditions prior to Jesus’s return (known as premillennialism).

The Pope released his World Peace Day message, where he quoted 1 Thessalonians 5:1-2, which says, “Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” The Pope, however, encouraged his readers to remain steadfast, writing, “when tragic events seem to overwhelm our lives, we are called to keep our hearts open to hope and to trust in God, who makes himself present, accompanies us with tenderness, sustains us in our weariness and, above all, guides our path.” He noted the worsening conditions where people had hoped to emerge triumphant from the COVID-19 pandemic but found themselves instead wrapped up in the international scandal of Russia invading Ukraine. “Certainly, the virus of war is more difficult to overcome than the viruses that compromise our bodies because it comes, not from outside of us, but from within the human heart corrupted by sin,” he wrote. He particularly encouraged world leaders to seek out ways that remove injustices and help others in need, ending his message by saying, “To all men and women of goodwill, I express my prayerful trust that, as artisans of peace, they may work, day by day, to make this a good year!”