VATICAN CITY -- Pope John Paul II, weighed down by illness and age, considered resigning as he turned 80 in 2000, according to his last will and testament published Thursday. The pope also wrote of tormented times for himself and the church and left instructions for his notes to be burned.
Written in several entries over 22 years, the document provides extraordinary insight into the pope's thinking in the twilight of his life as he reflected about death and his legacy -- and as he prayed for the "necessary strength" to continue his mission.
"The times in which we live are unutterably difficult and disturbed," he wrote in 1980, according to the official Vatican translation from Polish. "The path of the church has also become difficult and tense ... both for the faithful and for pastors."
In a March 1979 entry to his testament, John Paul said he left no material property and asked that his longtime private secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, burn all his personal notes.
The testament mentioned only two living people -- Dziwisz and the retired chief rabbi of Rome, Elio Toaff, who welcomed him to the city's synagogue in 1986 in a historic gesture of reconciliation between Roman Catholics and Jews.
The pope made several entries in his testament, starting the year after his election in 1978. The final entry was in 2000, when he was in pain and suffering Parkinson's disease. He died Saturday at age 84.
Each entry was written in Polish during Lent, the period of reflection before Easter.
In the final entry, John Paul appeared to consider stepping aside.
"Now, in the year during which my age reaches 80 years, it is necessary to ask if it is not the time to repeat the words of the biblical Simeon 'Nunc dimittis.'" The reference is to the passage, "Now, Master, you may let your servant go."
He reflected that he had been saved from death in a 1981 assassination attempt "in a miraculous way," and said his fate was even more in the hands of God.
"From this moment it belongs to Him all the more. I hope He will help me to recognize up to what point I must continue this service," the testament said.
In an early entry, he scratched in the margins that he wanted to be buried "in the bare earth, not a tomb." Accordingly, John Paul will be placed in the grottoes under St. Peter's Basilica.
In 1982, the pope considered the possibility of a funeral in his native Poland. Three years later, however, he left the site of his burial in the hands of the cardinals.
John Paul's funeral today promises to be one of the largest Western religious gatherings of modern times -- conducted with the pomp of an ancient liturgy and attended by royalty, political power brokers and multitudes of the faithful.
President Bush, along with former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, knelt and prayed at the side of the pope's bier Wednesday night, then paid a courtesy call yesterday on Italy's President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and planned a dinner with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The U.S. delegation will be joined today by Britain's Prince Charles, who postponed his own wedding by one day to honor the pope; by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; and by representatives of more than 80 countries. Jewish and Muslim religious leaders will be there, along with Israel's foreign minister and the head of the Arab League.
At the end of the March 2000 entry, John Paul remembered his family, his childhood and his early priesthood in Poland.
"As the end of my life approaches I return with my memory to the beginning, to my parents, to my brother, to the sister (I never knew because she died before my birth), to the parish in Wadowice where I was baptized, to that city I love, to my peers, friends from elementary school, high school and the university, up to the time of the occupation when I was a worker, and then in the parish of Niegowic, then St. Florian's in Krakow, to the pastoral ministry of academics, ... to Krakow and to Rome. ... to the people who were entrusted to me in a special way by the Lord.
"To all I want to say just one thing: 'May God reward you.'"
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