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VATICAN CITY, April 7: In the year 2000, Pope John Paul wrestled with the question of whether to resign after leading the Roman Catholic Church into the new millennium, his last will and testament indicate.
In a personal will, written over a period of more than two decades and made public on Thursday, the Pope also indicates that early in his pontificate he considered the possibility of a funeral in Poland.
He asks that his personal notes be burned, states that he leaves behind no property and asks that the things he used in daily life be distributed as seen fit.
The Pope, who died on Saturday, firmly believed that his mission was to lead the Church into the new millennium. Despite physical frailty he did so and later in 2000 wrote in his will:
“I hope He helps me understand until what moment I have to continue in this service to which he called me on Oct 16, 1978,” — a reference to the date that he was elected Pontiff.
By the time of the millennium his health had seriously declined and Parkinson’s Disease was taking its toll.
If he had resigned, he would have been the first Pope to do so willingly in 700 years.
The Pope says several times that he was ready to die at any time. Death appeared to be ever present in his mind following a failed assassination attempt against him in 1981.
The Pope believed God foiled the attempted assassination by a Turkish gunman and wrote in 1982: “God has prolonged this life, in a certain sense he has given me the gift of new life.”
The Pope also thanks God for sparing the world a nuclear holocaust during the Cold War.
PERSONAL NOTES: The will was nearly all spiritual but asks that his long-time secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, oversee the burning of his personal notes.
As for his material goods, the will says: “I leave behind no property to be disposed of. As far as the daily things I need, I ask that they be distributed as seen fit.”
The Pope had no family members left.
In the last section, the Pope thanks the Roman Catholic Church, other religions, as well as artists, scientists and politicians for their support during his pontificate.
In a section written in 1982, he makes a reference to his “place of funeral” and asks Cardinals to “satisfy as far as possible” the desires of the cardinal of Krakow and the entire Polish bishops’ conference.
Two years later, he specifies in another entry that the cardinals were no longer obliged to ask the Polish bishops for their view on the place of his funeral.
Repeatedly throughout the will he entrusted himself to God and the Madonna, saying his life was in their hands.
The Pope refers to only three people: his personal secretary Dziwisz, the late Polish Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and Elio Toaff, who was chief rabbi of Rome when the Pope made a historic visit to the city’s synagogue in 1986.
He writes: “All other thanks instead I leave in my heart before God himself, because it is difficult to express them.”—Reuters
