Defying the pope

last updated 8 January 2015

Rome

Pope John Paul II’s private secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, said this week that he had disobeyed instructions to burn the late pope’s private papers. John Paul ordered in his will that his writings be destroyed, but Dziwisz said he couldn’t do it. “Nothing is fit for burning,” he told Polish radio. “Everything should be preserved and kept for history, for future generations—every single sentence.” Some Vatican watchers speculated that the archbishop, who became a powerful figure in the Vatican during the years of the pope’s illness, could use his control of the documents as leverage over the current pontiff.