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Pope's book describes time after murder try

WARSAW - In his new book, Pope John Paul II for the first time described publicly the moments after he was gravely wounded in 1981, saying he was fearful and in pain, but had "a strange feeling of confidence" that he would live.

In the book, a copy of which was obtained Thursday by the Associated Press, the Polish pontiff also said his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, "understood that above his power - the power of shooting and killing - there is a greater power."

In Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums, the pope said he remembered being rushed to the hospital but didn't recall much of what happened after he arrived because "I was almost on the other side."

The book, his fifth, is essentially a transcript of conversations he had in Polish with his close friends political philosopher Krzysztof Michalski and the late Rev. Jozef Tischner in 1993. It will be published Feb. 23 in Italy by Rizzoli, which also plans an English version soon for the United States.

In it, the pope broadly compares abortion to the Holocaust, saying both derived from governments in conflict with God's laws.

The most personal section of the book contains John Paul's recollections of how his faith sustained him after he was shot in the abdomen on May 13, 1981, in St. Peter's Square.

Before reaching the hospital, he told his personal secretary, the Rev. Stanislaw Dziwisz, now an archbishop, "I forgive the assassin," according to the book.

[Last modified February 18, 2005, 19:08:03]