Mortifying: Pope John Paul II Whipped Himself For Spiritual Growth

While the world knew the late John Paul II as a cheerful, globe-trotting pontiff -- a "happy warrior," as one biographer put it -- in private the Polish pope used to whip himself with a belt and spend entire nights prostrate on a bare floor in the quest for spiritual growth, according to a new book based on accounts from those closest to John Paul.

Msgr. Slawomir Oder, who is leading the church investigation that will decide whether John Paul should be declared a saint, told a Rome news conference on Tuesday that the pope, who died in 2005, used self-mortification "both to affirm the primacy of God and as an instrument for perfecting himself."

A man of great physical vigor, John Paul, born Karol Wojtyla, often used a belt to flagellate himself, Oder said, and did so throughout his life as a bishop in Poland as well.

"As some members of his close entourage in Poland and in the Vatican were able to hear with their own ears, John Paul flagellated himself," the priest writes in a book that draws on the sworn testimony of the 114 people who were close to John Paul and who testified before the tribunal investigating his cause for sainthood. "In his armoire, amid all the vestments and hanging on a hanger, was a belt which he used as a whip and which he always brought to Castel Gandolfo," the papal retreat where John Paul spent the summer.

While self-mortification evokes images of an unhealthy and medieval spirituality -- or, more recently, the masochistic albino monk portrayed in "The Da Vinci Code" -- the practice, or at least the principle, has never disappeared. Pope Paul VI, who died in 1978, and Mother Teresa, were among the more prominent Catholics known to have used what is a called a cilice, a band usually worn around the thigh with prongs pointing inward. A cilice is the modern version of the hair shirt, though it is not quite as gruesome as it sounds. And those who flagellate themselves usually do with a small rope or cord using light lashes that are mostly symbolic.

"In reality, they cause a fairly low level of discomfort comparable to fasting," Father Mike Barrett, an Opus Dei priest, said back when "The Da Vinci Code" film was making waves. "There is no blood, no injury, nothing to harm a person's health, nothing traumatic."

In other words, no harm, no foul. But that doesn't mean practices beyond fasting aren't frowned upon in contemporary Catholicism -- they are -- or that the reports of John Paul's habits of self-mortification aren't going to make waves. They are, in part because of ongoing debates over the meaning of redemptive suffering. As far back as 1984 John Paul wrote in an apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris, (On the Christian meaning of human suffering), "Suffering, more than anything else, makes present in the history of humanity the powers of the Redemption."

Another aspect to the newsworthiness of the latest reports stems from the fact that the late pope clearly took self-mortification so seriously.

In Oder's book, "Why He's a Saint: The Real John Paul II According to the Postulator of His Beatification Cause," he writes that after spending a night lying on a bare floor with arms outstretched, Karol Wojtyla would mess up the covers of his bed so his staff wouldn't know what he'd been doing. And as pope, John Paul -- who had a serious sweet tooth -- would fast rigorously during Lent and lose several pounds. He would also fast before ordaining priests or bishops.

Many Christians who practice self-mortification do in imitation of, or solidarity with, Christ's suffering on the cross, and in the book, Oder says John Paul believed that he was doing what St. Paul professed to do in the Letter to the Colossians: "In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ."

"It's an instrument of Christian perfection," Oder said in response to questions about how such a practice could be reconciled with Catholic teaching that holds that the human body is a gift from God

John Paul's rough penance is not exactly shocking to those who knew him or knew of his affinity for traditional piety and practices, and the discipline he brought to everything in his life. Indeed, the reports are likely to boost a canonization that is already a safe bet. (There are reports that he will soon be beatified, the final stage before official sainthood.)

Still, word of John Paul's penitential practices was so eye-opening that it overwhelmed other newsworthy elements in the book, such as the revelations that in the ambulance on the way to the hospital he forgave the gunman who shot and nearly killed him in May 1981, and that he at first thought the assassin was sent by the Red Brigades, the left-wing radicals who terrorized Italy in the late 1970s and 1980s. When the trail of clues from the shooter, a Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca, appeared to lead to agents from the Soviet bloc, John Paul reportedly confronted then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The other news from the book is the extent to which John Paul weighed resigning should he become incapacitated. No pope in modern times has ever resigned or retired. There have long been rumors that John Paul, who eventually succumbed to complications from a debilitating Parkinson's-like disease, had left a letter of resignation in the event of his incapacitation. As Catholic News Service reports, Oder's book contains letters that John Paul prepared in 1989 and in 1994, offering the College of Cardinals his resignation in case of an incurable disease or other condition.

In the 1989 letter the pope wrote that should he be unable to carry out his duties, "I renounce my sacred and canonical office, both as bishop of Rome as well as head of the holy Catholic Church." In the 1994 letter the pope said he had spent years wondering whether a pope should resign at age 75, as other bishops must. But he decided against retirement, and there is still a vigorous debate among canon lawyers as to whether a pope can in fact resign and whether the College of Cardinals would have been able to accept the pope's resignation.

In the end, all of the revelations about flagellation and such may be more of an unfortunate distraction from the testimony of the pope's final years, when he struggled against a growing paralysis but continued to write and travel and appear in public and show the zest for life he always had -- a kind of self-mortification that was also a powerful public witness for those who were similarly aged or infirm.