Documentary reveals second attack on Pope John Paul II

The late Pope John Paul II was stabbed by a mentally-ill priest in 1982, the year after he was shot, his former secretary, now Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, has revealed in a new documentary.

Dziwisz, who is now cardinal of Krakow, Poland, was John Paul's private secretary and closest aide for nearly 40 years, including all of his 27 years as pontiff.

The documentary, called 'Testimony' and narrated by British actor Michael York, is a film version of a memoir published by Dziwisz last year but with some additions.

It will make its official premiere at the Vatican tomorrow night, in the presence of Pope Benedict.

On May 12, 1982, Pope John Paul was visiting Fatima to give thanks for surviving an assassination attempt a year earlier on May 13, 1981 when he was shot in St Peter's Square by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca.

A mentally-ill Spanish priest, Juan Fernandez Krohn, lunged at him with a dagger and was knocked to the ground by police and arrested. The fact that the knife actually reached the Pope and cut him was not known until now.

"I can now reveal that the Holy Father was wounded. When we got back to the room (in the Fatima sanctuary complex) there was blood," Dziwisz says in the documentary.