NEWS STORY: Pope Considered Resigning As He Approached 80, Will Says

c. 2005 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II revealed in his will, made public Thursday (April 7), that he considered resigning as he neared his 80th birthday in 2000, but decided that after surviving a 1981 assassination attempt he must devote the rest of his life to God. “I ask him […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II revealed in his will, made public Thursday (April 7), that he considered resigning as he neared his 80th birthday in 2000, but decided that after surviving a 1981 assassination attempt he must devote the rest of his life to God.

“I ask him to recall me when he himself wishes,” the pope said in the 15-page will. “I hope also that as long as I will carry out the Petrine service in the church, the mercy of God will lend me the force necessary for this service.”


John Paul, who died Saturday at the age of 84, also gave thanks for the work of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and the end of the Cold War. He said he left the Catholic Church, his native Poland and all of humanity in the “maternal hands” of the Virgin Mary.

The will indicated that the Polish-born pope, the former archbishop of Krakow, had for a time left open the possibility of being buried in Krakow rather than in the Vatican with many of his fellow pontiffs.

The testament consists of seven highly personal and often moving entries, which the pope wrote in Polish during spiritual exercises held at the Vatican each year for Lent, the liturgical season of penance leading to Easter.

He began the will in 1979 shortly after his election, and completed it during Holy Year 2000.

The Vatican issued an Italian translation of the will as the last of an estimated 2 million mourners filed past the body of the pope, who has been lying in state in St. Peter’s Basilica for three days. He will be buried in the grotto under the basilica on Friday after a solemn three-hour Mass in St. Peter’s Square to be attended by some 200 world leaders.

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton prayed beside the pope’s body in the basilica on Wednesday night after they arrived in Rome. George W. Bush will be the first U.S. president to attend a papal funeral.

Talking to reporters about the pope on Air Force One during the flight from Washington, Clinton said, “I wouldn’t have wanted to come up against him in an election for mayor. The man knew how to build a crowd.”


Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., viewed the pope’s body Thursday. They stood for a time in front of the catafalque in silent prayer.

The Vatican decided to extend the viewing time by two hours to accommodate an expected 1.5 million Poles still arriving by plane, train and bus. Earlier reports predicted 5 million Polish pilgrims, but the numbers dropped because of a lack of transport, officials said.

The College of Cardinals also decided to open the first session of its closed-door conclave to elect his successor at 4:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. EDT) on Monday, April 18. Instructions left by John Paul in 1996 allow the cardinals to conduct one round of ballots on the first day.

In his will, John Paul said that he was inspired to write spiritual testament by “that sublime testimony on the death of a Christian and of a pope” left by Pope Paul VI in 1978.

The pope spoke of his possible resignation in the longest section of the testament, which he dated March 12-18 of Holy Year 2000.

“According to the designs of Providence it has been given to me to live in the difficult century that is now passing,” he said, “and now in the year in which I will be 80, I must ask myself if it is not the time to repeat with the biblical Simeon `Nunc dimittis (now dismiss).”’


John Paul referred to a passage in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus was brought to the temple and the elderly Simeon asked God to let him die now that he had seen the savior, saying, “Lord, you now have set your servant free.”

But, the pope said, he had been saved “from death in a miraculous way” when Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot and seriously wounded him in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981. Because God had prolonged his life, he said, “From this moment it belonged still more to him.”

Writing in 1982, the pope said he had wanted the College of Cardinals to consult with bishops in Poland on where to have his funeral, leaving open the possibility that it would take place in Krakow.

But, three years later, he said the cardinals “had no obligation” to consult the Polish prelates, and in 1992 he wrote in the margin, “the burial in the earth, not in a sarcophagus.”

John Paul, who provided the moral _ and financial _ support to undermine communism in his native Poland, also wrote about the Cold War in a 1980 entry.

“The times in which we live are unspeakably difficult and unquiet,” John Paul wrote. “The path of the church also has become difficult and tense (with) trials characteristic of these times, both for the faithful and for the pastors.”


The pope said the persecution of the church, presumably in Soviet bloc countries, exceeded in “ruthlessness and hatred” what was experienced by the early church.

In his final entry in 2000, John Paul said he praised God that “the period of this so-called Cold War ended without violent nuclear conflict, the danger that had weighed on the world in the earlier period.”

The pope also said he was grateful for “the great gift of the Second Vatican Council,” which met in the 1960s to modernize and reform the church. John Paul, who attended the council as a young bishop, said he was “convinced that new generations will continue to draw from the richness of this council of the 20th century and broaden it.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

John Paul stated his bequests in his first entry. Noting that he left no property to be disposed of, he asked that his secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, distribute his belongings of everyday life and burn his notes. He thanked Dziwisz for his “collaboration and aid” over the years.

The pope said he left in the “maternal hands” of the Virgin Mary “the church and also my nation and all of humanity. I thank everyone. I ask pardon from everyone. I also ask prayer that the mercy of God is greater than my weakness and unworthiness.”

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, dean of the College of Cardinals, will concelebrate the pope’s funeral Mass with 164 cardinals, the Vatican said.


In a strong ecumenical gesture, Coptic Patriarch Stephanos Ghattas of Alexandria, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Community, will deliver valedictions.

The Vatican said Orthodox delegations also would come from Moscow, Athens and some 15 other countries. Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, Mennonite, Disciples of Christ and Evangelical churches and Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu communities also will send representatives.

KRE/PH END POLK

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