'Let me go to God'
2006-03-15 16:33
Rome - Pope John Paul's final words on his deathbed were "let me go to God", a new book on the late pope reveals.
Written with the help of his longtime assistant, Stanislaw Dziwisz, and the late pope's personal physician, Renato Buzzonetti, the book retraces John Paul's rich medical history.
It includes previously undisclosed details on his hospitalisation after the 1981 gunfire attack in St Peter's Square and provides confirmation that John Paul was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991, about 5 years before the Vatican finally admitted the Polish-born pope had been hit by the degenerative disorder of the central nervous system.
According to Let me go, extracts of which were published on Wednesday by Famiglia Cristiana, an Italian Catholic weekly, John Paul remained serene during the final days of his life.
Buzzonetti recalls the day of March 31 2005 when the ailing 84-year-old suffered from "septic shock and a cardio-circulatory collapse" as a result of an infection to the urinary tract.
'Let me go to God'
Two days later, on the morning of April 2 the pope, speaking in Polish with a weak voice, told his aides to "let me go to God".
At about 19:00 he fell into a coma and died at 21:37 that evening.
The book also recalls a curious episode connected to his hospitalisation of May 1981 after he was seriously wounded by gunshots fired by Turkish extremist Mehmet Ali Agca.
On that occasion, doctors at Rome's Gemelli hospital asked Vatican Radio to interrupt its broadcasts briefly as its transmissions interfered with the hospital's ultrasound scan equipment.
John Paul's initial suspicions regarding the attack fell on the Red Brigades, an Italian left-wing terrorist group that was particularly active in those years. - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA