Swedish-based occult outfit GHOST wrapped the tour cycle for 2015's "Meliora" album and last year's "Popestar" EP with a concert Saturday night (September 30) in Gothenburg that ended dramatically with singer Papa Emeritus III getting forcibly removed from the stage by two men. A short time later, an elderly person wearing Papa-like attire of a robe and a tall pointed miter headdress, his face covered in black-and-white corpse paint, took the stage and addressed the crowd in Italian. He reportedly said (see video below): "I am Papa Emeritus Zero. The party is over and now a new era begins. The Middle Ages begin now."

Papa Emeritus is played by GHOST lead singer and founder Tobias Forge, who, in a parody of the Catholic Church's tradition of papal succession, is purportedly replaced by a new Papa for each GHOST album.

Every Papa, as it happens, has a voice and build exactly like his predecessors.

Forge has spent the last few weeks working on GHOST's fourth album for a tentative April 2018 release.