‘I Leave No Property Behind Me’

“Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (cf. Matthew 24, 42) -- these words remind me of the last call, which will happen at the moment the Lord wishes. I desire to follow Him....

I leave no property behind me of which it is necessary to dispose. As for the everyday objects that were of use to me, I ask they be distributed as seems appropriate. My personal notes are to be burned. I ask that this be attended to by Father Stanislaw [Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the pope’s private secretary], whom I thank for his collaboration and help, so prolonged over the years and so understanding. As for all other thanks, I leave them in my heart before God Himself, because it is difficult to express them.

As for the funeral, I repeat the same dispositions as were given by the Holy Father Paul VI. [Here there is a note in the margin: “Burial in the bare earth, not in a sarcophagus.”]

The times in which we live are unutterably difficult and disturbed. The path of the Church has also become difficult and tense, a characteristic trial of these times -- both for the Faithful and for Pastors. In some Countries (as, for example, in those about which I read during the spiritual exercises), the Church is undergoing a period of such persecution as to be in no way lesser than that of early centuries, indeed it surpasses them in its degree of cruelty and hatred.

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As the Jubilee Year [2000] progressed, day by day the 20th century closes behind us and the 21st century opens. According to the plans of Divine Providence, I was allowed to live in the difficult century that is retreating into the past, and now, in the year in which my life reaches 80 years (“octogesima adveniens”), it is time to ask oneself if it is not the time to repeat with the biblical Simeon ‘nunc dimittis’ [Part of the Latin for “Now, Master, you let your servant go in peace.”]

On May 13, 1981, the day of the attack on the Pope during the general audience in St. Peter’s Square, Divine Providence saved me in a miraculous way from death....

As the end of my life approaches I return with my memory to the beginning ... 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.”

“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.” [Latin for “Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.”]

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Excerpts from Pope John Paul II’s last will and testament, as provided by the Vatican information service’s English translation of the official Italian translation from the Polish.