Pope John Paul II not only practiced severe bodily penance \u2013 including whipping himself with a belt and sleeping on the floor\u2013 but also wrote a letter in which he offered his resignation in the case he was incapacitated.<\/p>\n
The revelations were made in an Italian book just published by the promoter of John Paul\u2019s sainthood process, Msgr. Slawomir Oder.<\/p>\n
The reports of the pope whipping himself first surfaced a couple of months ago in another Italian book, \u201cSanto Subito,\u201d by Andrea Tornielli. The Pope saw those penances, along with fasting and sleeping on the floor, as a way of uniting himself to the suffering of Christ.<\/p>\n
While there had long been rumors of a resignation letter written during the pontificate, the new book brought it to light.<\/p>\n
Oder\u2019s book, \u201cWhy A Saint,\u201d reproduces a 1989 letter in which the Pope offers his resignation to the College of Cardinals in case he was incapacitated. The Pope was only 68 at the time.<\/p>\n
While there has been much speculation that John Paul will officially be declared \u201cBlessed\u201d by the Catholic Church in a massive ceremony in Rome this October, no date has been set for the beatification.<\/p>\n
In December, Pope Benedict signed off on John Paul\u2019s \u201cheroic virtues,\u201d officially making him Venerable, but a miracle worked through John Paul\u2019s intercession has to be approved before he is declared Blessed.<\/p>\n
A second miracle is necessary for full-fledged sainthood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pope John Paul II not only practiced severe bodily penance \u2013 including whipping himself with a belt and sleeping on the floor\u2013 but also wrote a letter in which he offered his resignation in the case he was incapacitated. The revelations were made in an Italian book just published by the promoter of John Paul\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4491,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4491"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}