VATICAN CITY -- The longtime private secretary of the late Pope John Paul II revealed in a film screened Thursday that the pope was slightly wounded in a 1982 knife attack by a priest in Portugal.
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz made the revelation in Testimony, a movie on John Paul's life that was screened for Pope Benedict XVI and top clergy at the Vatican.
It was known that John Paul had been assaulted by a knife-wielding Spanish priest while visiting the shrine of Fatima in Portugal to give thanks for surviving an assassination attempt. He was shot by a Turkish gunman in St. Peter's Square in 1981 and seriously injured.
But it was not known in 1982 that the pope had been cut by a knife.
The ultraconservative priest, Juan Maria Fernandez Krohn, was opposed to the reforms adopted by the Catholic Church and attacked the pope in a Fatima square. He was stopped by police and spent several years in jail.
Blood was found on the pope's vestments after the attack, but John Paul was not seriously injured and was able to continue with his schedule, Dziwisz said.
Dziwisz, now archbishop of Krakow, served the pope for 39 years from his years as bishop there until his death in Rome in 2005 and has often said John Paul was "a father" to him.
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