POPE John Paul II believes that God spared his life as a young man during the Nazi occupation of Poland as part of a divine plan.
Extracts from his personal memoirs, Gift and Mystery, were published yesterday in the Italian dailies Corriere Della Sera and La Repubblica.
The Pope's book is intended as a reflection on the priesthood and the past 50 years, rather than as an autobiography. He announced its publication at a special Mass in St Peters on All Saints' Day last week while celebrating the 50th anniversary of his 1946 ordination.
In it he recalls how he found work in a stone quarry in the autumn of 1940 to avoid deportation to Nazi concentration camps.
He writes: "I was spared much of the great and horrendous tragedy of the Second World War. Every day I could have been picked up from the street, from the quarry and taken off to a concentration camp. Often I asked myself, many of my contemporaries are dying but why not I? Now, I know that it was not just chance."
The "definitive resolution" of his priestly vocation occurred during the Nazi occupation.
"Was this merely a coincidence of time?" he asks. "Or was there not a deeper connection between what was maturing inside of me and the historical context? This is a difficult question to answer but what is certain is that nothing happens by chance in God's scheme of things."
In the extracts published yesterday, the Pope recalls life with his pious and widowed father, adding a surprising reflection on his school days in the 1930s, days shared with female as well as male students.
"Indeed, at school I had many female colleagues and given that I was much involved in the school theatre club, I had numerous possibilities to meet girls," the Pope writes.
"However, that was not my main concern. At that time, I was absorbed by a passion for literature and in particular for dramatic literature, and for the theatre."
The Pope's memoirs, to be published in Rome on Friday, come two years after the publication of his international best seller, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, an informal reflection on religion and faith.