Pope's Will Shows He Felt Weight of Office
April 7, 2005
John Paul II's will, about 15 pages long and written in his native Polish, said he left no material property and asked that his personal notes be burned. He asked that the things he used in his daily life be distributed "as seen fit."
In the last entry, during the Catholic Church's Jubilee Year in 2000, the pope suggested that he was suffering under the burden of ill health -- the effects of his Parkinson's disease were already apparent -- and that he wrestled with the question of whether or not to resign after leading the church into the new millennium.
He wrote that he hoped the Lord "would help me understand until what moment I have to continue in this service to which he called me on the day of 16 October, 1978" -- a reference to the date that he was elected Pontiff.
However, he appears to have decided to leave the decision to God, who he said had saved him from the assassination attempt in 1981. He asked God to "re-call him when He saw fit."
If he had resigned, he would have been the first pope to do so by his own choice in 700 years.
Spiritual matters
Most of the will was devoted to spiritual matters, although he did ask that his long-time secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, to oversee the burning of his personal notes. As for personal property, the pope wrote that he was "not leaving behind any property of which it should be necessary to take care of."
In repeated passages, John Paul II wrote that he entrusted himself to God and the Madonna, saying his life was in their hands. He said at several places that he was ready to die at any time.
The will also asks that he be buried in "the bare earth, not in a tomb," a request the Vatican is honouring with his burial beneath St. Peter's Basilica on Friday.
Two decades
The document was begun in 1978, one year after becoming pope. Its last entry was in March of 2000. Each entry was written during Lent, a period of reflection during the church calendar that precedes Easter.