The book, called “Why he is a Saint-The Real John Paul II” was written by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the Vatican official in charge of the process that could lead to sainthood for John Paul. It includes previously unpublished documents.
John Paul, who died in 2005, was shot and nearly killed in 1981, underwent several operations, including one for cancer, and suffered from Parkinson’s disease for more than a decade.
He moved closer to sainthood last month when Pope Benedict approved a decree recognising that his predecessor had lived the Christian faith heroically.
The book, published yesterday, reveals that even when he was not ill, he inflicted pain on himself, a practice known in Christianity as mortification, so as to feel closer to God.
“In Krakow as in the Vatican, Karol Wojtyla flagellated himself,” Oder writes in the book, citing people in the late pope’s close entourage while he was bishop in his native Poland and after he was elected pope in 1978.
