NICHOLAS CHRISTIAN

THE Vatican has published an official, meticulously detailed account of Pope John Paul II's last days and hours as he approached death, including his final words, mumbled weakly in Polish: "Let me go to the house of the Father."

The Vatican publishing house produced a 220-page volume, with entries in chronological order, starting with January 31, the day the Holy See's press office announced that the Pope's audiences were being suspended because he had flu symptoms.

Some of the details in the account have been revealed by the Vatican already, but the volume, which went on sale at the Vatican's shop yesterday, gives more information.

Its publication might be an effort by the Vatican to ward off future doubts over whether the Holy See has told all about the pontiff's death.

There was much speculation in past decades over how some of John Paul's predecessors died, notably John Paul I, who was Pope for only 33 days in 1978 before he passed away in his Vatican apartment.

The account goes on to cover John Paul II's symptoms, care and response to treatment during two hospitalisations and then during his last days in his Vatican City apartment, culminating in his death on April 2.

As he lay dying, Pope John Paul II was aware of the presence of the crowd in St Peter's Square below his apartment window and calmly viewed death as a "passage from one room to another", said his longtime secretary Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz at the time.

"He heard everything. He heard the square, he heard the prayer, the presence of the young people. The Holy Father heard, because he was conscious right to the end, almost to the end, even the last day," said Dziwisz.

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