Pope delivers first full address after illness

In a hoarse but relatively strong voice, Pope John Paul read his full weekly address yesterday for the first time since he was treated in hospital earlier this month for breathing problems.

Over the past two weeks, the 84-year-old Pope has only been able to murmur a brief blessing at the end of the Angelus prayer, leaving an aide to read the longer text.

But in a sign that he is making a steady recovery from his sudden ailment, the Pope read out the whole message yesterday, winning warm applause from the faithful in St Peter's Square.

"I greet the pilgrims gathered here," he said, staring down from the window of his Vatican apartment.

"I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week." The Pope told the crowd that the essential task of the papacy was to ensure "the unity of the Church", adding that the call "to guard his flock" was "particularly alive in (him)".

Vatican watchers said the comments were an indication that the Pontiff was determined to carry on in charge of the 1.1 billion-strong Church and had no intention of retiring.

The Polish Pope was rushed to a Rome hospital on February 1 suffering from an inflamed windpipe and throat infection brought on by a bout of influenza. He was allowed home 10 days later.

His illness revived debate over whether the Pope, who also suffers from Parkinson's disease and severe arthritis, should stand aside for a younger man.

But Vatican officials insist the Pope is regaining his strength. On Saturday, they announced he had resumed his private audiences at the end of his annual, week-long retreat for Lent.

In a new book, Pope John Paul recalls that after a near-fatal shooting in 1981 he was "already on the other side", but says that before losing consciousness he felt confident he would survive.

In Memory and Identity, which includes transcripts of the Pope's conversations with friends in 1993, the Pontiff repeats his conviction that divine intervention saved him from death, guiding the bullet that hit him away from vital organs.

The book is due to be published in Italy this week. In Polish-language extracts provided to Reuters by Polish publisher Znak, the Roman Catholic leader also discusses freedom, patriotism and European integration.

In one of the conversations about the assassination-bid, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Pope's secretary, recalls that at the doctors' request he read the Last Rites when the Pope's blood pressure and heart rate fell dangerously low.

"Actually, I was already on the other side," the Pope says. Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot the Pope during a general audience in St Peter's Square on May 13, 1981. He served 19 years in an Italian prison for the attempted killing, and is now imprisoned in Turkey for other crimes.

The Pope recalls remaining conscious for a time after the shooting, and remembers part of the trip to the hospital.

"I was suffering, there was reason to fear, but I had a sort of strange confidence. I told Father Stanislaw that I forgave the assassin - but what happened in the hospital, I don't remember," the Pope says.

Agca has said Bulgaria's communist-era secret services commissioned him to kill the Pope on the orders of the Soviet KGB, who feared the Polish-born Pontiff would stir anti-communist revolt in Eastern Europe.

The Pope has cleared Bulgaria of any link to the shooting, but says the attack was part of 20th century political violence.

"I think it was one of the last convulsions of the 20th century ideology of violence. Violence was propagated by fascism and Nazism, violence was propagated by communism," he says.

Agca fired the shot on the anniversary of one of the days when three shepherd children said they saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal. The Pope credits the Madonna of Fatima with saving his life.

The Pontiff visited Agca in jail at Christmas 1983. In the book he says the gunman was uneasy about why the attempt failed.

"This unease led him to the problem of religion - he asked what the mystery of Fatima really meant... this was the main object of his interest, what he wanted to find out more than anything," the Pope says.

"It seems to me that Ali Agca understood that above and beyond his own power, the power of shooting and killing, there is a higher authority. So he began to seek it. My wish for him is that he finds it."

Memory and Identity is the second papal book to be published within a year. Last March, he published "Get up. Let us go!", which was part autobiographical and part didactic.

The Pope is the most prolific pontiff in history, having penned dozens of encyclicals, essays and messages to the world's Roman Catholics. In 2003 he published a book of poetry.