World won’t end in December: Vatican Astronomer

December 13, 2012: The predictions that the world will end on Dec. 21 are "not even worth considering," said the Vatican's top astronomer Father Jose Funes, who directs the Vatican Observatory.

His observations were published in Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in the backdrop of predictions that world would end on Dec. 21 following a calculation according to the Mayan calendar.

Such predictions are "not even worth discussing," the priest said as talks about the doomsday are flooding the Internet ahead of the purported December 21 apocalypse. “Yes, the universe is expanding and if some models are correct, it will at one point break away- but not for billions of years,” he said.

He said that Christians profoundly believe that "death can never have the last word."

The Mayan Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. The Mayans wrote that the significant 13th Baktun ends Dec. 21.