Pastorini

Pastorini, pseudonym of Charles Walmsley (1722-1797), Catholic bishop. Born in Lancashire and educated in seminaries in France, he wrote his General History of the Christian Church (1771), which foretells the triumph of Catholicism in 1825 from the Apocalypse of St John, a forecast circulated as Prophecies of Pastorini in chapbook editions during the period of the United Irishmen's Rebellion. Thereafter Pastorini became a household word in rural Ireland.