Pope Karol Wojtyla, in his will, asked that his spiritual diaries be burned upon his death, but his secretary did not; instead, he presented them to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.
Later, the notebooks were published in Polish, and then translated into several languages. I read the English edition.
The spiritual diaries range from 1962 to 2003, before and after Karol Wojtyla became a Pope.
Reading this book, I have been surprised that he attended the gatherings not as the supreme head of the Catholic Church, but as a simple participant. The retreats were led by others, usually a bishop or an archbishop, not by him! This shows how humble he was.
In his diaries, the word ‘meditation’ is recurrent. Obviously, during the spiritual retreats he meditated. I thought that the term ‘meditation’ only belonged to the Eastern religion. As a child, I learned that prayer was enough to get to heaven. Apparently, also Catholics meditate. I think Pope John Paul II meditated on the Bible, but who knows what was hidden in his great, noble, and humble heart!
Ettore Grillo, author of these books:
– November 2: The Day of the Dead in Sicily (English edition)
– A Hidden Sicilian History (English edition)
– The Vibrations of Words (English edition)
– Travels of the Mind (English edition)
– Una Storia Siciliana Nascosta (edizione in lingua italiana)
– Viaggi della Mente (edizione in lingua italiana)
Ettore Grillo's Blog 