Portent of Doom?

I think the consensus is that 2016 has been a pretty bad year all round. I certainly have had a shocker personally.

On Friday something else happened which didn't exactly fill me with confidence:

In the very early fourth century, Saint Januarius, bishop of Beneventum in Italy, died a martyr during the bloody persecution of Emperor Diocletian. A relic of his dried blood has been preserved to this day and is kept in the cathedral of the diocese of Napoli (Naples), whose patron saint he is. On three separate occasions each year, the blood liquefies on its own in what appears to be a miracle: on the Saturday before the first Sunday in May; on September 19, which is the feast of St. Januarius; and on December 16. When on rare occasions the blood fails to liquefy, this has historically been the harbinger of impending calamity. This past Friday, on December 16, 2016 — for the first time in over 36 years — the blood did not liquefy.

Church Militant reports:

The people of Naples have witnessed in its history that when the miracle doesn't happen, it's often a premonition of evil. Some of the occasions where the blood didn't liquefy in the last few decades were: 1980, when a terrible earthquake hit South Italy; 1973, when Naples suffered an outbreak of cholera; 1939, when World War II broke out; 1940, when Italy joined the War; 1943, when Italy was occupied by the Nazis. And throughout the centuries the absence of the astonishing phenomenon has been precedent to religious persecutions, eruptions of the Mount Vesuvius, earthquakes, revolutions, wars and the deaths of kings, archbishops and Popes.

I'm not sure what, if anything to make of this, but it certainly does not do anything to quell my growing sense of unease about the state of the world.